Displaying Womanhood

Some Rosenfeld images treat women as the subject, depicting them at work, at play, or while socializing. Others use the female form mainly to enhance the composition or sell a product. In both cases, they all capture and communicate messages about popular ideas of womanhood in America at that place and moment in time.

Earlier Rosenfeld photographs do show women as subjects in their own right. Morris often composed his shots around a single subject, whether a person or a boat. Many of the later photographs were taken at commercial shoots or boat shows, using women as props—there to seize attention, but not the subject of the photograph. Small-sized models were typically used to enhance the apparent size of the boats and their interiors.