Wilson Centre for Photography: Anne Brigman (1869-1950) +View Org. Info | More Information anne.w.brigman@gmail.com The Wilson Centre for Photography was formed in 1998 by Michael Wilson as an archive for research on the history, aesthetics, and preservation of photographs. The Centre hosts seminars and study sessions with UK and international graduate students, patrons, curators and practitioners. In addition the Centre collaborates, curates exhibitions and loans photographs to museums worldwide. |
HELP & INSTRUCTIONS
|
Portrait of Annie Brigman
1909. Platinum print. | 9 1/8 x 6 inches
Mary Bisbee, who had a photographic studio in downtown Berkeley, California from 1899-1905, took this portrait of Anne Brigman.
Melody
1904–05. Velox 'Carbon' gelatin silver print, printed circa 1910. | 6 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches
Anne Brigman emerged as a photographer during a cultural shift in values from the late-nineteenth century Victorian period to the modern era. She made her first photographs in 1901. Engaging family and friends as her models, her earliest photographs reflect and idealize Victorian views of womanhood and classical themes.
Captain Martin Brigman
1904. Gelatin silver print. | 7 3/4 x 4 3/4 inches
At the age of twenty-four, Anne Nott married Martin Brigman, a Danish sea captain twenty years her senior. Family members described the couple as “wild and free people,” and their marriage afforded Anne the opportunity to see the world while accompanying her husband at sea. Later she would refer to marriage, chores, and the responsibilities of her household as “domestic drudgery.”
Incantation
1905. Gelatin silver print. | 11 1/8 x 6 1/2 inches
The High Sierra offered Brigman a freedom unlike any other. “I wanted to go and be free,” she recalled of her ascent from the San Francisco Bay Area into the mountains. “I wanted the rough granite flanks of the mountains and the sweet earth…. I wanted to forget everything except that I was going back to heaven…. That was all I wanted.”
The Magic Pool
1906. Gelatin silver print. | 9 5/8 x 5 1/2 inches
“In all of my years of work with the lens, Brigman explained. “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.”
The Water-Nixie
1909. Gelatin silver print, printed circa 1918. | 10 3/8 x 6 inches
Inspired by English writer and poet Edward Carpenter’s writings about the revival of an enchanted pagan world, Brigman embarked on photographic outings that could be described as performances. Her sisters and friends re-enacted the roles of divine spirits—such as nymphs, fauns, and dryads—in her outdoor pagan theater. In Germanic mythology and folklore, water nixies were feminine spirits who occupied rivers, streams, and other bodies of water.
The Soul of The Blasted Pine
1906. Gelatin silver print, printed 1907. | 7 11/16 x 9 5/8 inches
More than any other element of nature, Brigman was drawn to trees because she found beauty in what she saw as their struggle to survive. She compared their endurance to the human struggle, which she believed was necessary for personal and creative growth. In Soul of the Blasted Pine, Brigman suggests that nature and human suffering are one and the same; a beautiful nymph cries out as she realizes that her own death, as well as the death of her tree body, is imminent.