Idée et Orchidée

In a career that included photography along with painting, drawing, poetry, and music, Frederick Sommer became known for Surrealist-inflected photographs printed with exquisite skill. In 1946 he began combining found objects and engravings into collaged compositions, such as this image, in which the objects depicted take on new meanings (the title translates to “Idea and Orchid”). Sommer made his home in Arizona but lived in Chicago at two key moments, in 1957 and 1963, while teaching at the Institute of Design. Hugh Edwards organized a show of his work in 1963, timing it also to coincide with an Aperture monograph. In his wall text, Edwards wrote that Sommer had “the valuable and seldom encountered ability for looking both inside and outside himself,” calling each print “a rare and compelling force.”