Re: RE: Gertrude Kasebier

Don,

It wasn't so much a "falling out" as that by, oh I suppose, 1910 and
thereafter, Stieglitz lost interest in Pictorialism and found Paul Strand
and company much more interesting -- or as I put it somewhere or other, he
wouldn't return Kasebier's phone calls, so to speak.

But her life is extremely interesting, as is her work. The Michaels book
is a jewel, and surely looks more exciting to us today than it did to
Stieglitz by 1915. About that time, BTW, "pictorialism" was for the most
part decayed. If you read some of the efforts of "The New York School of
Pictorialism" (book) and see the work, degenerated into the worst salon
style (not all -- there was still great work being done, but a ton of
hokey awful). I think BTW I wrote about the so-called NY school of
Pictorialism in -- yep, in P-F #9, page 50. I was so tickled to "decode"
some remarks that passed Peter Bunnel right by (when he anthologized it)
because he wasn't a New Yorker -- or let's say I can't believe he would
have given the material the treatment he did if he'd "gotten" it.

But I digress... Kasebier was a very successful portrait photographer,
with a studio in some fashionable place I forget now...So she did quite
well thank you when Stieglitz dropped her... And yes she did study art at
Pratt, but...hmm, if memory serves (faintly) I don't think she studied
photography there. But another point of interest (to me anyway) is that
she was already in her 40s when she began photography. A great
photographer and a commercial success.

Although the Michaels book is the only one I know of with glossy color
photos, there was a catalog from a show at, again if memory serves, a
Philadelphia museum. They had a copy of that at Pratt... and it was the
one place I found much about her working method. But I don't think today
there's much you'd learn from that, except the charm of it, because it's
pretty obvious from looking. We have so many resources on gum today, we
forget that pre-internet, folks had to figure a lot of it out for
themselves.

Judy

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006, Don Bryant wrote:

> Jan,
>
> Thanks for the reference. I would like to see some good repros of her work.
> Some of the references that I have read to state that she had a falling out
> with Stieglitz at one point. Now if I could just find a copy of the first
> issue of "Camera Work."
>
> Don
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jan Kapoor [mailto:jkapoor@jankapoor.net]
> Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 9:13 PM
> To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
> Subject: Re: Gertrude Käsebier
>
> Kasebier is one of my favorite photographers. I have a copy of a
> beautiful book about her filled with very fine reproductions of her
> work: "Gertrude Kasebier: The Photographer and Her Photographs" by
> Barbara L. Michaels; published 1992 by Harry N. Abrams, New York; ISBN
> 0-8109-3505-8. It is available from Amazon.com, and seems to be the only
> book currently available about Kasebier.
>
> She began to photograph in the late 1880s, using dry plates at first,
> then roll film when it became available, and hand held cameras. Her
> personal images are in the soft-focus pictorial style, with a certain
> amount of hand-manipulation in the printing process, and she was a
> member of the Photo-Secessionist group, along with Stieglitz, Steichen,
> Clarence White and Alvin Langdon Coburn. The first issue of Stieglitz's
> "Camera Work" was entirely devoted to her work. She was also a very
> successful portrait photographer.
>
> Jan
>
> Don Bryant wrote:
>
>> Is anyone familiar with the work of Gertrude Käsebier?
>>
>> I have done some internet searches on her name and a couple of sources
>> report that she worked in gum and platinum. However I am unable to find
> many
>> other details regarding her work or specifically, information about her
>> printing technique and preferred processes.
>>
>> Don Bryant
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> Fine art photography of Jan Kapoor at www.jankapoor.net
> Pinhole, large format, alternative printing processes and digital.
>
>
>
>
>
>
Received on 06/30/06-12:53:59 AM Z