Otto Ping

by Hartley, W. Douglas

Otto Ping began taking pictures of the people and places of his native Brown County, Indiana, in 1900 at the age of seventeen in order to make some extra money. He continued doing so for forty years while he worked at such other endeavors as peddling, farming, canning, and chicken raising. Unlike the painters and photographers who came to the county in these years to capture quaint and rustic scenes for sophisticated audiences elsewhere, Ping made his pictures for the people who were in them. Primarily a portraitist, Ping photographed individuals, couples, family groups, and larger gatherings. He had no studio and carried with him no lights or props. His portraits are characterized by hastily thrown up backdrops, stark lighting, and rigid poses. They have a documentary quality, and one senses in the faces that peer from these images the determination with which these people met lives of toil and hardship. Many of the portraits betray a sense of melancholy. Life was tenuous for both you