topic Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER in Community Chat

BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

Oznell — Mon, 18 May 2020 16:08:31 GMT

Her work can be so haunting. Born on this day, 1852, died in 1934. Gertrude (Stanton) Kasebier became a foremost portraitist. In that era, she had to buck a lot of other people's expectations for her, to succeed in photography the way she did.

Honored in the profession, and was admired by associate Alfred Steiglitz, before she broke with him in her later career.

She's known for her work with native Americans, mothers and children, and celebrities of the day, including the notorious chorus girl, actress and "adventuress", Evelyn Nesbit. (If you are unfamiliar with her scandalous trajectory, look her up on Google-- quite a read!)

The young and beautiful Nesbit, breaker of many hearts:

I enjoy the variety of Kasebier's work.

The way the light falls in this one, love it!

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

Somertime — Mon, 18 May 2020 16:49:03 GMT

Thank you so much for introducing me to her work!

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

golding76 — Mon, 18 May 2020 16:57:14 GMT

That "young and beautiful Nesbit" is, indeed, breathtakingly beautiful. She broke from Stieglitz, eh? What a willful and beautiful spirit she must have had!

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

Oznell — Mon, 18 May 2020 21:48:19 GMT

Yes, @golding76 , I'm not sure what-all the issues were that caused the estrangement between Kasebier and Steiglitz. One of them I've read was that he objected that she made such a living at it; he seems to have thought she should do it for art's sake alone! That seems so far-fetched, though-- I mean, she had to make a living. She had a family, and obligations. It just seems weird that a peer, one you had been friendly with, would sort of have 'the nerve' to question that.

So there must have been more to it, I would think.

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

golding76 — Mon, 18 May 2020 22:29:28 GMT

Going out on a limb here, but perhaps unwanted advances on his part?

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

Somertime — Mon, 18 May 2020 22:58:30 GMT

@golding76 At the time Gertrude met Steiglitz, she was 47 years old. Steiglitz was married at the time and stayed married until he met Georgia O'Keefe in 1916. They became lovers almost immediately and she was a subject. His photographs of O'Keefe are very sensual and beautiful. They married in1924.

Oznell was right in what she said about the money........that it was the reason for the break. Even though he promoted Gertrude's work, he would sell it at a very low cost, sometimes for free. Several other photographers have made the same claim against him at the time.

I love his photography, his photos of NYC are beautiful. He was a painter as well, more so in later years and painted scenes of the Lake George area. He was known to be difficult as well.

Photos of Georgia:

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

Somertime — Mon, 18 May 2020 23:15:40 GMT

@golding76 @Oznell The story of Evelyn Nesbit is fascinating..........The Girl in The red Velvet Swing! She was a lover of Sanford White and married to Henry K. Thaw an extremely wealthy and high up on the social plane.

Henry K. Thaw shot Stanford White on the roof top garden of the Old Madison Square Garden in plain sight with plenty of witnesses. The trial was notorious! Fascinating piece of history worth looking up!

It was a movie years ago called The Girl in The Red Velvet Swing. Joan Collins palyed Evelyn, Ray Milland was Stanford White and Farley Granger was Henry K. Thaw!

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

golding76 — Tue, 19 May 2020 00:34:51 GMT

TWO LIVES Stieglitz and O'Keeffe: Vision was the product of their union

John DorseyTHE BALTIMORE SUN

Jan. 1, 1916, should be known as a significant date in the history of American art because it was an even more significant one in the lives of photographer Alfred Stieglitz and painter Georgia O'Keeffe. It was Stieglitz's 52nd birthday, but that was the least of it. It was also the day on which artist Anita Pollitzer brought a group of drawings by her friend Georgia O'Keeffe to show Stieglitz at his New York gallery called 291.

Stieglitz was at a low point in his career and his life. Always most interested in promoting what he considered the best of contemporary art, in the early years of the 20th century he had introduced to America the work of Picasso, Braque, Cezanne and other leading European artists. But the celebrated 1913 New York Armory Show had more or less grabbed avant-garde art out of his hands.

Nor was his own photography going especially well. In particular, Belinda Rathbone points out in the catalog of the exhibit "Georgia O'Keeffe & Alfred Stieglitz: Two Lives" at Washington's Phillips Collection, Stieglitz had long sought an ideal woman to photograph without finding her in his wife, daughter or elsewhere.

O'Keeffe changed all that, for which both she and Stieglitz's eye deserve credit. He instantly recognized the quality of her charcoals, as he wrote to the artist later: "Those drawings, how I understand them. They are as if I saw a part of myself."

'Absolute Truth'

And as the world knows, if he saw a part of himself in O'Keeffe's art, he found another part of himself in O'Keeffe. It was as if she completed him by her own independence of spirit as well as her artistic essence, as he acknowledged in 1918: "I never realized that what she is could actually exist -- absolute Truth -- clarity of vision to the highest degree."

They formed a union almost immediately upon meeting and were married in 1924. In their closest years, from 1916 to about 1930, theirs was an extraordinary partnership. His encouragement and promotion helped make her a leading American artist, and she changed every aspect of his life. In those years he championed not only O'Keeffe, but a whole new group of American artists, including Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove and John Marin. And, having found his ideal woman at last, he embarked on a photographic portrait of O'Keeffe that eventually grew to hundreds of images.

Although it is called "Two Lives," the show's central question has to do with how they affected one another's art. It's about time this subject was dealt with in an exhibit -- this one is billed as the first to show their work together since Stieglitz presented a joint exhibition in 1924.

As such, it's unquestionably an important event. But in an almost perverse way it's also a disturbing one; for while the catalog's essays argue intelligently for a developing relatedness of vision, the catalog's -- and to a lesser extent the show's -- visual juxtapositions are at times so pat they come close to turning the whole exercise into a kind of cliche.

What the essayists argue for, to oversimplify it, is that O'Keeffe and Stieglitz drew one another toward a kind of abstraction of the object in an effort to approach something essential that could be expressed through it -- whether "it" was a building, a human form, a flower or a landscape.

In her essay on O'Keeffe's effect on Stieglitz, Belinda Rathbone writes: "With O'Keeffe's help, he literally pruned his vision, as he began to appreciate the landscape as abstract space, waiting to be cut to the shape of his feelings."

For O'Keeffe's part, writes Elizabeth Hutton Turner, "Already during her first year with Stieglitz, O'Keeffe began exploring the photographer's shallow depth of field in which everything is visible. . . . Stieglitz's photographs had made objects out of her abstractions. Her paintings had made abstractions out of his Portrait photographs. Now, sensitive to the subjective side of photography, O'Keeffe declared, 'Nothing is less real than realism.' This realization freed her from the need to choose between abstraction and representation, art and photography. To both their ways of thinking it was an entirely new direction, one which put her and Stieglitz on an equal footing to pursue and capture 'the real meaning of things' in nature together."

The trouble with the visual part of this enterprise is that it too often simply pairs works of O'Keeffe and Stieglitz that look alike, which tends to trivialize what they were doing.

When we see, for instance, a Stieglitz three-quarter-length photograph of O'Keeffe in a pose in which she is bent a little at the waist, juxtaposed with an O'Keeffe flower whose stem is bent a little in much the same way; or when a Stieglitz photograph of O'Keeffe with her hands opening toward the viewer and upward appears alongside an O'Keeffe painting of flowers in the same alignment; or when we see a Stieglitz train puffing smoke and an O'Keeffe train puffing smoke; or an O'Keeffe rainbow and a Stieglitz rainbow, the tendency is to think, "Well, if that's what it's about, so what?"

Some sort of recognition of this problem seems to have occurred with the hanging of the show, for a few of the juxtapositions in the catalog are not in the show. In the catalog, for instance, Stieglitz's "Georgia O'Keeffe: A Portrait -- Neck" (1921), with its strong diagonal, is shown beside O'Keeffe's "Pattern of Leaves" (about 1923), with an equally strong diagonal in the same direction. But in the show they hang in different galleries.

Similarly, O'Keeffe's "White Birch" (1925) does not appear next to Stieglitz's "Dancing Trees" (1922), and the breasts of Stieglitz's "Georgia O'Keeffe: A Portrait" (1918-1919) do not appear beside the pendulous flowers of O'Keeffe's "Black and Purple Petunias" (1925). In fact, the Stieglitz photographs are not even in the show.

Obvious comparisons

In place of some of the obvious comparisons found here, one could wish for other, perhaps more subtle comparisons. In his catalog essay, Roger Shattuck devotes three paragraphs to O'Keeffe's "Black Abstraction" (1927), describing it in the context both of Stieglitz's "The Steerage" (1907) and of two Stieglitz series of photographs of thighs and buttocks. But "Black Abstraction" is not to be found.

The show does offer instructive comparisons, though. It's interesting to see Stieglitz's "Spiritual America" (1923) with O'Keeffe's "White Abstraction (Madison Avenue)" (1926), both as variations on abstracting the object and as compositions. And we can appreciate O'Keeffe's "Red Hills, Lake George" (1927) and Stieglitz's "Songs of the Sky" (1924) for both their similarities and their differences. They are studies of landscape and of light, but through color O'Keeffe simplifies to essentials, while in comparison Stieglitz's black and white image borders on the baroque.

In general, if sometimes with oversimplification, the show supports the thesis that each artist helped the other to a realization of potential. We knew that already, but now we know it better.

'TWO LIVES'

Where: The Phillips Collection, 21st and Q streets, Northwest, Washington.

When: Mondays through Saturdays 10 a.m. to 5 pm., Sundays noon to 7 p.m., through April 4.

Admission: $5 adults, $2.50 students and seniors (62 and older), 18 and under free; by advance ticket only. Tickets also available at Ticketmaster outlets, with a $2 surcharge per ticket.

Call: The Phillips Collection, (202) 387-2151; Ticketmaster in Baltimore, (410) 481-7328.

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

Oznell — Tue, 19 May 2020 00:47:09 GMT

Thanks, @Somertime and @golding76 , for fascinating biographical info!

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

golding76 — Tue, 19 May 2020 01:24:32 GMT

Thank you, oznell and Somertime. Once again I have learned something on the QVC Forum that has expanded my world. The expansion was in a beautiful direction, ladies, and I appreciate beauty all the more these days.

That face, though. Such beautiful features (and not created by a surgeon).

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

Somertime — Wed, 20 May 2020 03:18:56 GMT

@golding76 Thanks so much! I missed reading the Baltimore Sun, today, so I appreciate the article.

A book was published in 1992 of the same name which I have and the exhibit is based upon, very interesting! I love her work! I have several of her works in poster form which I have framed.

Thanks, again!

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

golding76 — Tue, 19 May 2020 01:39:10 GMT

The article was not in today's Baltimore Sun. It was published on January 31, 1993. Somehow I did not capture the date when I copied and pasted. Apologies!

This discussion has prompted a thought, though. I began thinking that we no longer have great portrait photographers (by that, I mean right now). Do we?

There seemed to be many (not all famous, of course) from the 1920s to the mid-1970s. My maternal grandmother's sister was married to one and lived in New York City with him. He was born in Russia. My Uncle Leo.

He had my mother sit for him quite a few times, and he took such beautiful portraits of her. These days, even mediocre photographers have disappeared because of those dang phones that snap ugly photos.

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

Somertime — Tue, 19 May 2020 01:50:14 GMT

Goldie, you are correct! Portrait photography has gone out of style as art. Beaton is gone, so is Lord Snowden, Mario Testino is another one that comes to mind.

The fashion photographers are the closest, now. But sadly, they are up in age and I cannot think of a new name. Avedon, Scuvillo, Irving Penn, Annie L (who did a number of portraits for Vogue.....Whoppi being my favorite), Bruce Weber, etc.

Different time!

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

golding76 — Tue, 19 May 2020 01:53:32 GMT

Oddly enough, the fashion photogs were the only ones I could think of. And their heyday has long passed.

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

Oznell — Tue, 19 May 2020 02:16:16 GMT

@Somertime and @golding76 , I always think of the brilliant Canadian portraitist, Yousuf Karsh. So many of the greats made the trek to his studio. Of course, this one of Churchill was justly famous:

But I also love the submerged qualities he brought out in others. Here's Jessye Norman:

The very famous one he did of Hemingway is haunting and disturbing, pointing to the depression that dogged his later years.

And I've never quite seen "Ike" like this, with that level, almost steely, but also very revealing, gaze. Love!

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

Somertime — Tue, 19 May 2020 12:22:07 GMT

@Oznell These portraits are spectacular! I have seen them over the years but was not aware of the photographer. They are so much more than a photograph! What did they say when the camera was first invented...........it steals your soul. Which is in these...........

They truly were artists!

Re: BIRTHDAY OF PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHER, GERTRUDE KASEBIER

Oznell — Tue, 19 May 2020 15:50:21 GMT

Well said, @Somertime .