Available From UC Press

How does photography shape the way we see sculpture? In David Smith in Two Dimensions, Sarah Hamill broaches this question through an in-depth consideration of the photography of American sculptor David Smith (1906–1965). Smith was a modernist known for radically shifting the terms of sculpture, a medium traditionally defined by casting, modeling, and carving. He was the first to use industrial welding as a sustained technique for large-scale sculpture, influencing a generation of minimalists to come. What is less known about Smith is his use of the camera to document his own sculptures as well as everyday objects, spaces, and bodies. His photographs of his sculptures were published in countless exhibition catalogs, journals, and newspapers, often as anonymous illustrations. Far from being neutral images, these photographs direct a pictorial encounter with spatial form and structure the public display of his work.

David Smith in Two Dimensions looks at the sculptor’s adoption of unconventional backdrops, alternative vantage points, and unusual lighting effects and exposures to show how he used photography to dramatize and distance objects. This comprehensive and penetrating account also introduces Smith’s expansive archive of copy prints, slides, and negatives, many of which are seen here for the first time. Hamill proposes a new understanding of Smith’s sculpture through photography, exploring issues that are in turn vital to discourses of modern sculpture, sculptural aesthetics, and postwar art. In Smith’s photography, we see an artist moving fluidly between media to define what a sculptural object was and how it would be encountered publicly.

Sarah Hamill is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at Oberlin College.

"Sarah Hamill's David Smith in Two Dimensions makes a decisive contribution to our understanding of one of the greatest modern sculptors by focusing attention—to all intents and purposes, for the first time—on the surprisingly important role of photography in his practice and thinking. All future students of Smith's art will be in her debt."—Michael Fried, Johns Hopkins University

"This unusually intelligent and illuminating analysis of David Smith’s photographs significantly redefines our understanding of the artist’s sculptural oeuvre. It is not just about the relation between his photography and his sculpture. Rather, it demonstrates in a way that no previous study has done how Smith’s often-experimental photographic imaging was integral to his sculptural practice."—Alexander Potts, University of Michigan

"Hamill’s exploration of the vital significance of photography to David Smith’s sculpture will alter the understanding of this great artist’s work. She shows the purposefulness with which he photographed his sculpture and how his photography amplified his dialogues with other influential modernists, such as Rosso, Brancusi, and Moore. Her analysis of Smith’s color photographs leads to a welcome revision of the language around his paint on steel. This astute and probing study reveals an artist of staggering intentionality and invention."—Michael Brenson, Bard College