Head of the Statue of the God Amun, Egyptian1350 B.C., Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY,

ca. 1950

Sheeler worked as a staff photographer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1920s and was a major photographer and painter in the Precisionist movement. Known also as "sharp-focus realism," the post–World War I movement celebrated modern industrial American landscapes. Sheeler took many Precisionist photographs documenting the museum’s Egyptian Wing throughout the 1940s and 1950s. This image depicts the stark isolation of a sculptural bust within the galleries. The Egyptian god Amun is identified by his braided beard and flat cap. Amun’s features are closely related to those of King Tutankhamun of the New Kingdom. He likely commissioned the bust, which was originally displayed in Upper Egypt, Thebes.