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Description

Anne Brigman was a trailblazing photographer who took up photography as a hobby in 1901. Within a handful of years, she had established herself as a leading member of the Photo-Secessionist movement, which championed photography as a fine art and embraced highly manipulated, “painterly” photographs. Brigman’s exaltation of the nude female body in harmony with nature exemplified the growing bohemian spirit on the West Coast at the dawn of the twentieth century. Like much of Brigman’s work, this view is artfully staged and echoes the modern dance aesthetics of her contemporary, Isadora Duncan. Brigman was an outspoken champion of women’s empowerment, sharing her views on the importance of female independence in a 1913 article titled “Fear Retards Woman.”