Anne Brigman, 20th Century Photographer
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| Soul of the Blasted Pine [yalebooks.yale.edu ] |
Anne Brigman (1869–1950) was ostensibly a well-known Photo-Secession working group member. Belonging to avant-garde circles had its advantages, but the typical coed composition of such groups came with new obstacles for women artists. Often finding themselves the single female member in a group, women artists faced the threat of being marginalized or overshadowed by the disregarding views of male members. [Baring Themselves-...] . [THE SOFT-FOCUS LEN...]
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Self-portrait, the artist; [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Anne_Brigman] |
Where is the photographer from?
Anne Brigman was born Anne Nott in Hawaii to a family of British missionaries who moved to California when she was 16. In 1894, she married a captain of the merchant navy, Martin Brigman, whom she would often accompany on his journeys. [awarewomenartists.com]
When was the photographer making images?
Her most famous images were taken between 1900 and 1920, and depict nude women in primordial, naturalistic contexts. [wikiart.org]
Trained as a painter, she turned to photography in 1902.
"In all of my years of work with the lens, I’ve dreamed of and loved to work with the human figure – to embody it in rocks and trees, to make it part of the elements, not apart from them." – Anne Brigman
What were the cultural/historic events that influenced the photographer?
After the San Francisco earthquake and inferno destroyed the old wooden city in 1906, locals often referred to the event by conjuring the figure of a raging, fire-breathing dragon, wreaking its havoc on the city of sin. The apocalypse marked the end of the old romantic, picturesque city and sent a phalanx of artists and bohemians into a mass departure into Berkeley’s hills and Carmel’s secluded beaches.
She was influenced by and an active influencer of the Soft-Focus Lens and Anglo-American Pictorialism era. [THE SOFT-FOCUS LEN...] Brigman’s 1908 photograph, Soul of the Blasted Pine [fig. 2], exemplifies the photographer’s distinct aesthetic that was centered on depictions of the female nude in nature. In this photograph, a female figure rises from the remnants of a tree on a rugged outcrop in the mountainous California landscape. [Baring Themselves-...]
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| Bare in the Backwoods [https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/12/30/arts/30brigman-01/30brigman-01-videoSixteenByNine3000.jpg] |
Her background in painting was particularly evident in her early work, where she employed extensive post-processing, editing her negatives using pencils, paints, and superimposition.
How would you describe the work of the photographer?
A little story, bear with me: In the summer before the earthquake, she had posed her sister and friends as nymphs enjoying the cool, refreshing breezes and waters of mountain glades. After the quake, she tramped through the same wilderness; Brigman discovered it to be a place of mysterious caverns and sinister shape-shifting trees. [blog.yalebooks.com]
Photographs of the mountains no longer appeared simply as a place to find personal transformation in experiences of awe and renewal. Still, it was now also a place of encounter with sudden death—reverberating with the nightmare of destruction back home in the Bay. Thus, her work evolved from a pure pictorial style to more of a straight photography approach, although she never really abandoned her original vision. [wikiwand.com]
Why is this photographer important to the history of photography?
Bold and revolutionary, the practice of Anne Brigman challenged the norms of her time. Critically acclaimed pictorial photographer in 1900s America, but also a poet, critic, and mountaineer, she made nature her studio, photographing female nudes in California’s spectacular and still relatively remote Sierra Nevada Mountains. Anne Brigman's photography was primarily influenced by European Symbolism but also drew on pagan mythology, Romanticism, and her childhood exposure to the native beliefs of the Hawaiian people. Her work came into view in conjunction with the birth of bohemian-core culture famously attributed to 20th-century California. [widewalls.ch]
More images: https://www.artsy.net/artist/anne-brigman
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