Brigman, Anne W. (1869–1950)
Brigman, Anne W. (1869–1950)
American photographer and member of the Photo-Secession group. Born Anne Wardrope Knott in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1869; died in Eagle Rock, California, in 1950; attended Punahou School, 1882–1883; married Martin Brigman, c. 1894 (separated, 1910).
Anne W. Brigman was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1869, a descendant of missionaries who had arrived there in 1828. Around 1886, Brigman moved to California and took up photography. Working on allegorical portraits, nudes, and draped figures in landscapes, she aligned herself with the Photo-Secessionists, a group intent on transforming photography into fine art. Its founders included Alfred Stieglitz, Clarence White, Gertrude Käsebier , and Edward Steichen. In 1906, Brigman was elected a fellow of the Photo-Secession, forming a close friendship with Stieglitz, who promoted her work.
Brigman's first important exhibitions took place in 1904 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. She was represented in the opening show of the Photo-Secessionists in New York in 1905. Four years later, in 1909, she won a gold medal at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exhibition in Seattle, Washington. Her work was first published in Camera Work (1909). In 1949, she produced a book with photographs and poetry, Songs of a Pagan, and was preparing a second publication, Child of Hawaii, at the time of her death in 1950.