I was drawn to this photograph of Georgia O’Keefe in the Peabody-Essex Museum Show “Georgia O’Keefe: Art, Image, Style,”  holding one of the animal skulls she would pick up on her walks in the New Mexico desert. Her hands were as striking as the bones.

She controlled every facet of her art,  home and life.

When she was first married to Alfred Steiglitz, he took some nude photos of her and put them in a show in his gallery. She disliked being portrayed in that way, especially by her own husband, and she resolved to control all the images of her from that time.

She was never photographed in the nude again, and set out to design and even make her own clothes.  Her image was powerful, forbidding and unforgettable, and she never permitted any man to decide for her what it would be.

The bones she collected in the desert became some of her most striking modernist works. The juxtaposition of her hands with the skull seemed especially powerful to me.

She created a look that was just as memorable as much of her art.