Details

Title

The Enigma

Artist/Maker

Clarence John Laughlin (American, 1905–1985)

Date

1941

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

Contact the museum for more information

Credit

Purchase

Accession #

75.76

On View

Currently not on view

These tall Corinthian columns are all that remains of Windsor Plantation of Port Gibson, Mississippi. The home was burned first during the Civil War and then again mysteriously in 1890. The clouds above the columns form a question mark above the structure’s ruins. For Laughlin, this symbolized the unknown circumstances of the building’s demise. He wrote in the photo caption: “From the cores of the brick columns young trees sprout, the whole structure suggesting an incredible upsurge of Classical civilization, somehow completely lost in time and space.”

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