Pioneering Women

By Suzanne Révy and Elin Spring

It’s women’s history month! Below, we review three recently published books about two pioneering early 20th century west coast photographers, Anne Brigman and Imogen Cunningham. 

“Costume Party at the studio of Dorothea Lange” c. 1920 by an unknown photographer . Participants ( back row, l-r) Roi Partridge, Imogen Cunningham, Anne Brigman (standing), Edward Weston, an unidentified man, (front row, l-r) Helen MacGregor, Roger Stuyvesant, and Dorothea Lange donned costumes to create a satirical tableau in the style of a religious passion play. From the book Anne Brigman: Photographer of Enchantment (Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson Trust Collection).

Anne Brigman (1869-1950) could arguably be called the “mother of Modernist photography” and was notably the only west coast member of Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession group. Although she retained a pictorial style in her work, she had an outsized impact on young west coast artists like Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange and Georgia O’Keefe. After her death in 1950, Brigman’s work seemed to vanish off the cultural radar, but her star is rising once again in two recently published books: Anne Brigman: The Photographer of Enchantment by Kathleen Pyne, and A Visionary in Modern Photography: Anne Brigman by Ann M. Wolfe, a retrospective exhibition catalog (Nevada Museum of Art, 2018-19).

(Top) “Finis” 1908 and (bottom) “Lone Pine” 1908 by Anne Brigman, page from the book Anne Brigman: The Photographer of Enchantment (The Michael G and C. Jane Wilson Trust, 2007)

Kathleen Pyne’s book, Anne Brigman: The Photographer of Enchantment is a detailed biography and critical analysis of Brigman’s work. Opening with Brigman’s childhood in Hawaii as the daughter of missionaries, we learn how the lush landscape and her appreciation of pan-pacific cultures would inform her art. At the turn of the century, she moved to the San Francisco Bay area where she took up photography and circulated among cultural elites like writers Jack London and Charles Keeler and painter William Keith. The hills of  Oakland and Berkeley fueled her interest in the natural world, where she developed her own voice. An autodidact, she learned her craft from photography books and pored over such journals  as Stieglitz’s Camera Work. After the great earthquake of 1906, she started taking three-to-four month sojourns to explore what she described as the “terrible wonderful” landscape of the Sierra Nevada. In 1910, she spent a challenging eight months in New York City and Connecticut and left her husband upon her return. Free to live on her own terms, Brigman produced some of her best work, including her more dramatic images “Storm Tree” (Feature Image) and “Via Dolorosa.” Eventually, she moved closer to her family in southern California and turned her camera toward the sea, creating a series of sand pictures that might have made Harry Callahan swoon.

“Via Dolorosa” 1911, platinum print (private collection) from the book Anne Brigman: Photographer of Enchantment.

“Heart of the Storm” 1912 by Anne Brigman, spread from the book A Visionary in Modern Photography: Anne Brigman. (Wilson Center for Photography)

A Visionary of Modern Photography: Anne Brigman is a hefty tome that opens with a series of quotes and large plates featuring Brigman’s dramatic studies of the figure in the sometimes treacherous vistas of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. We learn of her struggles with printing, and how she came to retouch her negatives so they could better express her vision. Her work anticipated the contemporary use of self-portraiture to explore the relationship between nature and identity, influencing artists such as Judy Dater, Ana Mendieta and Laura Aguilar who have all explored the human form in the western landscape. Perhaps more intriguing is her somewhat fraught relationship with Alfred Steiglitz, whose ideas on the nude female figure rankled Brigman. Steiglitz viewed nudes – including Brigman’s – as a declaration of freedom from societal strictures around sex, whereas Brigman wished to express the spirituality of nature. She saw the human form as the soul of the trees in which she entwined her body. The book also includes essays on Brigman as a mountaineer and a poet, and concludes with an archive which clearly delineates the creative arc of her career as artist and photographer. 

(Left) “Cadencia” 1934 (Wilson Center for Photography) and (Right) “Judgement Day (Sand Erosion)” 1932 (George Eastman House) from a spread in the book A Visionary of Modern Photography: Anne Brigman.

Self Portrait with Korona View (Camera), 1933″ gelatin silver print by Imogen Cunningham.

Imogen Cunningham (1883 – 1976) was both ahead of her time and of her time, creating images in every style and genre that arose throughout her illustrious seven-decade career: Pictorialism to Modernism and portraiture to still-life.  In 2020, the J. Paul Getty Museum published Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective, with delightfully digestible text by Peter Martineau and Susan Ehrens, to accompany the first comprehensive exhibit of the artist’s work in more than 35 years. Exhibits are scheduled at the Getty Museum (6.29.21 – 9.26.21) and at the Seattle Art Museum (11.18.21 – 2.6.22). This exhibition catalogue takes a deep dive into Cunningham’s life, with illuminating attention to those who influenced her, such as Anne Brigman, Gertrude Käsebier, and Frances Benjamin Johnston – and to the many more she mentored and inspired, from Georgia O’Keeffe to Alma Lavenson and Judy Dater.

LEFT: “On Mount Rainier I, 1915” Gelatin silver print by Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976)
RIGHT: “Soul of the Blasted Pine, 1908” Photogravure by Anne Brigman (1869-1950).

“Magnolia Blossom” negative 1925, gelatin silver print 1930 by Imogen Cunningham.

A true pioneer and one of the few women to achieve a college education in that era, Cunningham majored in Chemistry at the University of Washington, interned with Edward S. Curtis to learn platinum printing and won a graduate fellowship to study photochemistry in Dresden, Germany, before establishing her own portrait studio in Seattle. Her exceptional intellect, curiosity, talent and determination led to her prominence in the growing western art circle that included Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, among others. It also allowed her to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune during two World Wars, motherhood and divorce, to emerge with celebrity status during the feminist movement of the 1960’s and 70’s.

“Triangles, 1928” gelatin silver print by Imogen Cunningham.

“Alfred Stieglitz at An American Place, 1934” silver gelatin print by Imogen Cunningham.

There was no shortage of gender discrimination during Cunningham’s lifetime, for which countless examples are cited. Her first monograph, published by Aperture in 1964, didn’t appear until she was 81. Although Cunningham was irked by how long it took to be recognized and collected by prestigious institutions for work she’d done – in some cases, thirty years previously – her tenacious character and buoyant attitude prevailed, as revealed by many prescient letters excerpted in this publication: “You can’t expect things to be smooth and easy and beautiful. You just have to work, find your way out, and do anything you can yourself.” If you care about Cunningham and/or feminism, you will find this revelatory history and definitive collection of exquisite photographic reproductions a true delight.

“Martha Graham, Dancer, 1931” gelatin silver print by Imogen Cunningham.

“The Unmade Bed, 1957” gelatin silver print by Imogen Cunningham.

Anne Brigman: The Photographer of Enchantment
by Kathleen Pyne
Yale University Press, New Haven and London
2020

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300249941/anne-brigman

A Visionary in Modern Photography: Anne Brigman
by Ann M. Wolfe with contributions by Susan Ehrens, Alexander Nemerov, Kathleen Pyne, Heather Waldroup, Design by Brad Bartlett
RizzoliElectra and the Nevada Museum of Art
2018

https://www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847862870

Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective
By Paul Martineau with contributions by Susan Ehrens
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
2020

https://shop.getty.edu/products/imogen-cunningham-a-retrospective-978-1606066751

(Featured Image) “Storm Tree” 1911 by Anne Brigman.