"Soul of the Blasted Pine," a self-portrait of Anne Brigman taken in 1908.
Anne W. Brigman (1869 - 1950) was an American photographer and one of the original members of the
Photo-Secession movement in America. Her most famous images were taken between 1900 and
1920, and depict nude women in primordial, naturalistic contexts.
Life
Brigman was born in Hawaii in 1869 and moved to California when she was sixteen. In 1894 she married a sea
captain, Martin Brigman. She was trained as a painter but begain taking photos around 1902. That
year, Alfred Stieglitz noticed Brigman's work and invited her to join the
Photo-Secession, an elite group of pictorialist American photographers who were dedicated to transforming photography into a higher form of
art. Brigman was the only Fellow of the society west of the Mississippi River,[1] and one of the few women. Her photos were printed in three
issues of Stieglitz's journal, Camera Work. She became revered by West Coast photographers and her photography influenced many of her contemporaries.
Brigman died in 1950 in California.
Photography
Brigman's photographs frequently focused on the female nude, dramatically situated in natural landscapes or trees. Many of her
photos were taken in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in carefully selected locations
and featuring elaborately staged poses. Brigman often featured herself as the subject of her images. After shooting the
photographs, she would extensively touch up the negatives with paints, pencil, or
superimposition.
Brigman's deliberately counter-cultural images suggested bohemianism and female
liberation. Her work challenged the establishment's cultural norms and defied convention, instead embracing pagan antiquity. The raw emotional intensity and barbaric strength of her photos contrasted with the carefully
calculated and composed images of Stieglitz and other modern photographers.
References
- ^ Susan Ehrens, A poetic vision: the photographs of Anne Brigman
(Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1995), 23.
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