African negro sculpture / photographed by Charles Sheeler with a preface by Marius de Zayas
A 1918 New York photographic book of African sculpture, photographed by Charles Sheeler with a preface by Marius de Zayas, made for an audience of modernist artists and collectors. The pictures are plain studio photographs of single carved wooden figures against neutral grey backdrops, lit to show the smooth planes, scarification patterns and stacked forms of each piece, which a designer might take as a model for simplified, geometric figure drawing.
