Anne W. Brigman

Interpretation

Consider how the woman blends into the dying tree, her arms becoming bent branches and her dress a dark hollow. In Anne W. Brigman’s photographs, women are not separate from nature, but a powerful part of it. Contrasting with the rigid norms of gender and domesticity in the early 1900s, the nude women in Brigman’s images belong to the wild natural world. Brigman’s photos feel like tributes to the lives of trees, the beauty of her friends, and the larger spirit of freedom they envision.

Acquisition note

Art historian Susan Ehrens is a specialist on the work of Anne W. Brigman. Brigman influenced a number of photographers in the RISD Museum’s collection, including Imogen Cunningham, Judy Dater, and Laura Aguilar, but prior to Ehrens’s 2022 gift of this print, the museum had no examples of Brigman’s work. Ehrens made this donation in honor of someone—a common practice—in this case Jan Howard, the museum’s curator emerita for prints, drawings, and photographs. Ehrens also gave the photograph by Ruth Bernhard (on the adjacent wall to the left).

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