Annie A Brigman, The Source 1909

Annie A Brigman

The Source, 1909

Camera Work XXV

Photogravure, 23.5 x 13.8 cm

Annie Brigman was one of the few photographers from the West Coast to become a member of the Photo-Secession group and have her images appear in Camera Work. Making only one trip to New York—in 1910, when she met Stieglitz, whom she idolized—Brigman remained isolated from the center of pictorial activity, and she expressed an exotic freedom in images that often intertwined female nudes with barren coastal rocks and trees. Unlike most of her contemporaries, who worked mainly in platinum or gum bichromate, she made primarily bromide (gelatin silver enlargements) from small negatives, many of which, unfortunately, exhibit rather unrefined handwork. Her well-known allegory The Source, however, is one of her most successful images—a peaceful, archetypal cleanly and confidently printed. 

Reproduced

Peterson, Christian A. Camera Work: Process & Image : [exhibition, Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, August 31-November 3, 1985, Seattle, Seattle Art Museum, November 22, 1985-February 2, 1986]. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of arts, 1985. p. 40.