Photograph by Anne Brigman. A large show of her work opened on Sept. 29, 2018 at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. Internet photo.
Ad published in Camera Works. Design by Edward Steichen, 1906. Click to read it.
Anne Brigman
By Paul Goldfinger, photography editor at Blogfinger.net Re-post 2018. Part of our ongoing series about female photographers.
Anne Brigman (1869-1950) photographed in the early 1900’s. Her best known works were landscapes featuring nude women–herself and others at the Sierra Nevada.
The work was considered radical, but early innovators of photographic art considered her images to be “ground breaking” and “ahead of her time” including Alfred Stieglitz, the publisher of the first major photographic magazine Camera Works.
Wikipedia says, “Anne Brigman was an American amateur photographer and one of the original members of the Photo-Secession movement in America (founded 1902) which was a major force in promoting photography as an expressive art form. Brigman’s most famous images were taken between 1900 and 1920.”
Anne Brigman, who was from California, may have been an amateur, but she was a pioneer of the feminist movement in America.
The show in Reno had 250 original prints. It opened on September 29, 2018 and closed on January 27.
A book was also published—the first of Brigman’s photographs:
So if any of you are visiting the crap tables in Reno, stop by the NMA for a bit of culture.
Basilica di San Marco. Piazza San Marco. Venice, Italy. By Paul Goldfinger. This photograph was published in the Pfizer Labs International Calendar Contest.
From Phillip Glass’s opera/ballet The Witches of Venice. Glass wrote this work in 1995 for La Scala in Milan. It is based on a fantastical children’s story, set in the magical city of Venice. This is the “Plant-Boy’s Song.”
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger (We like to re-post this piece about every 1-2 years. Last post was July, 2020.)
Photographer’s note: If you go to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, near Tanglewood, there are lots of old B and B’s. Our friends Dick and his wife Luisa used to stay at Peirson’s Place, an old house, sort of ramshackle, with a large barn in the back where the kids could play and even sleep.
Maragaret would make breakfast each morning — nothing fancy like some places where they serve Eggs Benedict. Dick is an internist, now retired, who also is a pianist. His wife Luisa is an artist, so they’re the sort of people you run into at Pierson’s Place.
Eileen and I went there a few times. During the day you could visit farmers’ markets or historic attractions or towns in the area such as Lenox and Stockbridge. You could also wander the grounds of the Tanglewood Music Festival where the peaks of the Berkshires give off vapors in the morning. You can listen to a rehearsal in the afternoon and then picnic on the great lawn, under the stars, while enjoying the magnificence of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
One morning I got up and meandered around the property at Peirson’s Place. There’s something about those cool mornings in the mountains as the new sun ripples across everything that’s still wet with dew and crisscrossed with leftover shadows.
I looked at the old house and the barn. There were flowers all around, and you could touch them, but not pick them. That’s what Margaret did before everyone came down for breakfast.
As I walked about, I came upon an old garage where I was startled by the eye of a creature peering out at me. It seemed alive even after I moved closer and identified it. The big red eye belonged to an old English sports car that was just itching to roar out of there onto the country roads.
SOUNDTRACK. “Someday Soon” by Judy Collins.
2018 Addendum: Eileen came upon a 1992 interview about Peirson’s Place. Margaret Mace Kingman (1912-1998) was being interviewed for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology archives. She was a descendant of the Peirson family which owned the property .
The interview was about her life and education, but this is what she said about the family’s Richmond, Mass. home:
“My childhood was right here on the property because I was born in the same room, in the same bed my mother was born in, in the same room my grandfather was born in. The property had been in the hands of my family since the land was bought from the Indians in 1761.”
Margaret became a college professor, and she added, “Sometimes I take students up around on the trails; we have quite a number of trails because we have, along with the property I gave to my son, more than 400 acres here. And you can see the trees still, some of the crab apple trees to which he had grafted other types of apples. They’re still growing although everything’s grown up now into forest. It used to be much more open than it is today.”
This photograph is from a series of images taken in Spring Hope, North Carolina.
We got off route 95 and discovered what appeared to be an abandoned rural community. We met a man who ran a gas station where the one pump wasn’t working very well.
The whole place was decrepit, but the buildings, although deteriorating due to time and weather, seemed to have a strong sense of home for people long gone. There were broken-down houses and out-buildings.
Many of the structures had bright colors, as if to say, “We’re not dead yet.” There was a sort of sad elegance and loneliness. I think the name refers to the hopes which the settling farmers had for water.
We pulled over to the side of the road and got out to walk around and take some photos.
It didn’t seem like we should stay long, so we got back on 95 and continued our journey north.
Later we looked up the town and found that it had a population of about 1,200 13 years ago. The census showed that the racial breakdown was about half white and half African-American. You can do a BF search at the top of the home page by typing “Spring Hope” into the box. Here is a 2016 post about Spring Hope:
“Underwater Study 3200” 1998, California. By Howard Schatz From Photograph magazine.
Howard Schatz is 74 years old and has had a successful second career as a photographer. One of his themes is underwater photography. His new show at the Fairfield Museum in Connecticut will be a retrospective of 25 years of his work.
DUKE ELLINGTON AND JOHN COLTRANE “In a Sentimental Mood.”
By Paul Goldfinger. Editor Blogfinger.net. Ocean Grove, NJ. Re-post from September, 2012 on Blogfinger.
Today, the glow of the moon, of the moonrise, or the moon over the ocean, or over the river….makes me think of Andy Williams.
I first listened to his new song, “Moon River,” playing on my car radio one night in 1961. That evening I was alone in my old Plymouth driving home from a date with my future wife, Eileen. I knew that “Moon River” had to be our song.
When I called the band leader for the wedding, he had never heard of the song, but he promised to look into it. And he did. I always suspected that Eileen and I were among the first to choose that song.
Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics, and Henry Mancini the music. It was very beautiful, but I never exactly knew what a “huckleberry friend” was; somehow I imagined I knew what kind of friend that was.
Today I finally looked it up, and the Urban Dictionary says, “There are your good friends: people who love you. And then there are your huckleberry friends: people who’ve known you for years and have stuck by you and love you no matter what.
“Here are some of the lyrics from that song which was featured in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s:
“There’s such a lot of world to see We’re after the same rainbow’s end, waitin’ ’round the bend My huckleberry friend, moon river, and me”
Truro Dunes, Cape Cod. Tri-X film. Leica M. Scanned from a darkroom silver gelatin print c. 1993. Photo by Paul Goldfinger, MD Image published on the cover of Internal Medicine News. Click on photo to enlarge.
THELONIOUS MONK SEPTET. “Ruby My Dear.” The tenor sax player is John Coltrane. Monk wrote the piece in honor of his first love Ruby R. (1947)
There is a documentary about John Coltrane who once was part of Monk’s group. It is Chasing Trane.
Horse Show at Chubb Park in Chester Township, New Jersey. Chester is not far from where the US Equestrian team trains. By Paul Goldfinger. Click image for full view. Reposted.
Paul Goldfinger, Editor, Blogfinger.net. 10/3/23.
This photograph shows the gentle and elegant sport of horses and all the rituals, postures, clothing and casual styles of these aficionados blended with the formality of it all.
When we lived in Chester, we often saw “horse people” (usually women) shopping or walking around town in their special clothes. I like the black coats and hats on these riders.
That’s why I chose Gato Barbieri’s “Girl in Black” (Para mi Negra) — a tango by the jazz saxophonist (b. 1934 in Argentina) who wrote the incredible score for film The Last Tango in Paris with Marlon Brando.
This song seems to fit for this photo. Argentina is horse country, and the tango is very sexy.
Do you see any of that in this photo? How do those riders get out of those pants anyhow?
