[Sizing a Suit]

Unknown

ca. 1955 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

By means of mirrors at the sides and overhead, a man's measurements are taken all at once on the "Yonkler Posture and Size Graph" by a tailor visible at the right edge of the photograph. This picture was surely made to illustrate the workings of the contraption, but it harks back to drawings, such as Leonardo's, concerned with the proportions of the ideal man. In this efficient, inhuman, "advanced" vision of the mid-twentieth century, however, man is no longer the measure of all things. Instead, he has become the inglorious sum of his measurements.

Artist

Unknown

Date

ca. 1955

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1996