00:00:01
I'm an wolf curator of the exhibition
00:00:04
and Brigman a visionary in modern
00:00:07
photography I first organized the
00:00:09
exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art
00:00:11
in 2018 and we were very excited that
00:00:13
the show would be traveling to the gray
00:00:15
art gallery at New York University in
00:00:17
April 20-21 fortunately the world had
00:00:21
other plans 110 years ago the New York
00:00:25
photographer and modern gallery owner
00:00:27
Alfred Stieglitz also promised and
00:00:30
Brigman a solo exhibition in New York
00:00:32
City his promise went unfulfilled while
00:00:36
this virtual presentation of an
00:00:38
breakevens work in no way can replace
00:00:40
seeing her photographs or hearing her
00:00:42
poetry in person it at least allows us
00:00:45
to tell her story more broadly and helps
00:00:48
us to fulfill our promise to her close
00:00:54
as the indrawn and outgoing breath are
00:00:56
these songs woven of faraway mountains
00:01:00
and the plains of the scene gleaned from
00:01:04
the heights and the depths that a human
00:01:06
must know as the glories of rainbows are
00:01:10
spun from the tears of the storm and
00:01:13
Brigman
00:01:15
[Music]
00:01:18
photographer poet critic and Mountaineer
00:01:21
and Brigman is best known for her
00:01:23
figurative landscape images made in the
00:01:26
Sierra Nevada in the early 1900s during
00:01:30
her lifetime Brigman significance
00:01:32
spanned both coasts of the United States
00:01:34
in Northern California where she lived
00:01:36
and worked she was a leading
00:01:38
pictorialist photographer a proponent of
00:01:41
the Arts and Crafts movement and a
00:01:43
participant in the burgeoning Berkeley
00:01:45
Oakland bohemian community on the East
00:01:48
Coast
00:01:48
her work was promoted by Alfred
00:01:50
Stieglitz who elected her to the
00:01:52
prestigious photo secession and
00:01:54
championed her as a modern photographer
00:01:57
her final years were spent in Southern
00:02:00
California where she wrote poetry and
00:02:02
published a book of poems and
00:02:04
photographs the year before she died the
00:02:08
pioneering work of this visionary artist
00:02:11
has long been overlooked but the story
00:02:13
of her remarkable life and important
00:02:15
contributions to the field of art
00:02:17
history deserve to be recognized and
00:02:23
Brigman story begins on the Hawaiian
00:02:26
Islands in the latter half of the 19th
00:02:28
century she grew up in Nuuanu Pali an
00:02:31
area above Honolulu on the island of
00:02:33
Oahu raised in a family of American
00:02:36
missionaries her early life was
00:02:38
influenced by the social customs of her
00:02:40
upper middle-class world which included
00:02:42
daily prayer and the expectation that
00:02:44
women's work was best suited to the
00:02:46
domestic sphere during her youth and
00:02:49
young adulthood Bergman navigated
00:02:51
between two worlds one defined by the
00:02:54
patriarchal values belief systems and
00:02:56
conventions of her Victorian era
00:02:58
upbringing and one that promised the
00:03:00
freedom and independence of
00:03:02
modern-era calling herself a child of
00:03:06
the tropics she would later reminisce of
00:03:08
the ache in her legs for flight and the
00:03:11
wild wonderful need to Stampede from the
00:03:13
trappings of her youth in 1885 at the
00:03:17
age of sixteen and that moved with her
00:03:20
family to California and Bregman made
00:03:25
her first photographs in 1901 she
00:03:27
adopted pastoral themes of the Victorian
00:03:30
era such as this landscape with sheep
00:03:32
resembling the work of other pict
00:03:34
wireless photographers her sisters and
00:03:37
friends were her first models and her
00:03:39
earliest images reflect victorian views
00:03:42
of womanhood
00:03:43
these include romantic portraits of
00:03:45
young women surrounded by flowers and
00:03:48
photographs that celebrate and idealize
00:03:50
motherhood feminine beauty and purity
00:03:53
but as Britain's photographic awareness
00:03:56
matured she would turn to new subject
00:03:59
matter a decision that would come to
00:04:01
define her reputation as an artist at
00:04:05
the age of 24 and not married Martin
00:04:08
Brigman a Danish sea captain 20 years
00:04:11
her senior the couple made their home in
00:04:16
a quaint brown shingled bungalow near
00:04:18
the bustling port of Oakland California
00:04:20
across the bay from San Francisco family
00:04:24
members described the couple as wild and
00:04:26
free people and an traveled frequently
00:04:29
with her husband at sea but when Anne
00:04:32
was at home in Oakland she assumed the
00:04:34
chores and duties of the household
00:04:35
referring once to such responsibilities
00:04:38
as domestic drudgery according to her
00:04:41
friend and fellow photographer Imogen
00:04:43
Cunningham fragment injured herself when
00:04:46
she fall while on board her husband's
00:04:48
ship the accident led to the surgical
00:04:51
removal of her left breast at a
00:04:54
one might assume that such disfigurement
00:04:57
which threatened victorian-era
00:04:59
definitions of idealized P might prevent
00:05:02
an emerging woman photographer from
00:05:04
photographing herself nude on the
00:05:07
contrary Brigman defied social norms and
00:05:10
began to make nude self-portraits in the
00:05:13
coming years at the turn of the 20th
00:05:19
century the San Francisco Bay Area was a
00:05:21
vital center of creative expression
00:05:23
Oakland and Berkeley where an Brigman
00:05:26
lived and worked her home to an
00:05:28
intellectual and creative community of
00:05:30
writers poets artists and educators
00:05:33
California's mild climate and diverse
00:05:35
landscapes fostered a collective
00:05:37
admiration for nature living in harmony
00:05:40
with nature was a key concept of
00:05:42
modernist thinking on the west coast
00:05:44
when Brickman's husband was away at sea
00:05:47
she forged friendships with a burgeoning
00:05:50
bohemian community of artists thinkers
00:05:52
and writers who shared her love for the
00:05:54
outdoors
00:05:55
this included the husband-and-wife
00:05:57
artists Arthur and Lucia Matthews and
00:05:59
she was close to the painter William
00:06:02
Keith known for his sketching trips to
00:06:04
the Sierra Nevada with his friend John
00:06:06
Muir Bregman embraced the Arts and
00:06:09
Crafts movement revival of classical
00:06:11
Greek arts literature theater and dance
00:06:13
in 1908 Brigman played the lead role in
00:06:17
Charles Keeler's allegorical play the
00:06:19
will of the wisp performed at the
00:06:21
Berkeley hillside Club
00:06:23
on April 18th 1906 San Francisco was
00:06:27
rocked by an earthquake and fire that
00:06:29
destroyed the homes studios and artworks
00:06:32
of many of Britain's friends Brigman
00:06:35
escaped the devastation but still she
00:06:38
wrote by summer many of us felt the need
00:06:41
of a change of scene after the long
00:06:43
strain I wanted to go and be free
00:06:47
Bremen once recalled of her journeys to
00:06:50
the Sierra I wanted the rough granite
00:06:53
flanks of the mountains and the sweet
00:06:54
earth I wanted to forget everything
00:06:57
except that I was going back to heaven
00:06:59
that was all I wanted in fall 1906
00:07:03
Bergman departed for the mountains at
00:07:06
the time the Sierra were still largely
00:07:08
considered a place for men when women
00:07:11
did venture to the higher elevations
00:07:13
they typically wore Victorian rocking
00:07:15
dresses and long-sleeved button-down
00:07:17
blouses this makes Brickman's
00:07:20
mountaineering and photography
00:07:21
excursions all the more groundbreaking
00:07:24
the mountains offered her a freedom
00:07:26
unlike any other she had experienced
00:07:29
camping with her Red Dog Rory or with
00:07:32
her sisters and friends Bergman made
00:07:35
many of her now iconic photographs among
00:07:37
pines and ancient juniper trees at 8,000
00:07:40
feet elevation some of her favorite
00:07:43
locations were Donner Pass Echo Lake and
00:07:46
desolation Valley all located in the
00:07:48
High Sierra not far from Lake Tahoe and
00:07:50
the california/nevada murder
00:07:53
Brigman once described the granite
00:07:56
outcroppings and high mountain terrain
00:07:57
of desolation valley as from evil
00:08:00
austere forbidding and sinister quoting
00:08:04
from walt whitman's song of the open
00:08:06
road she expressed a hunger for the
00:08:09
clean high silent places up near the sun
00:08:12
and the stars to express her own desire
00:08:15
to eat and sleep with the earth by the
00:08:20
time an Brigman was making photographs
00:08:22
in the Sierra
00:08:23
she was already immersed in the revival
00:08:25
of classical literature art theater and
00:08:28
dance that was sweeping the San
00:08:30
Francisco Bay Area these influences are
00:08:32
apparent in many of her images around
00:08:35
this same time
00:08:36
Bergman also discovered the work of
00:08:38
British poet and writer Edward carpenter
00:08:41
who practiced a philosophy of nature
00:08:43
mysticism committed to living in harmony
00:08:46
with nature carpenter and his followers
00:08:49
delved into pre-christian myths and
00:08:51
rituals as a source for understanding
00:08:53
the unconscious inspired by carpenters
00:08:57
writings about the revival of an
00:08:59
enchanted pagan world
00:09:00
Brigman embarked on photographic outings
00:09:04
that could be described as performances
00:09:07
her sisters and friends re-enacted the
00:09:10
roles of divine spirits such as nymphs
00:09:13
fawns and dryads in her outdoor pagan
00:09:16
theater
00:09:17
Brigman never hired professional models
00:09:20
my friends are brave and they enter into
00:09:23
the spirit of my work she once said in
00:09:26
fact many had told her that in the very
00:09:29
act of posing they had experienced an
00:09:32
exaltation of mind and soul Reagan had
00:09:37
first realized that the nude figure
00:09:39
could be used to express personal
00:09:41
struggle when she saw robear demo shoes
00:09:44
1904 photograph titled struggle more
00:09:48
than any other element of nature Brigman
00:09:50
was drawn to trees because she found
00:09:52
beauty in what she saw as their struggle
00:09:55
to survive she compared their endurance
00:09:58
to the human struggle but she believed
00:10:00
was necessary for personal and creative
00:10:02
growth in all of my years of work with
00:10:06
the lens
00:10:07
they've been explained I've dreamed of
00:10:09
and loved to work with the human figure
00:10:12
to embody it in rocks and trees to make
00:10:15
it part of the elements that occur see
00:10:19
Brigman would later speak of struggle
00:10:21
both as an image and as an idea as
00:10:24
wonderful struggle was a theme that
00:10:27
would become central to her own life
00:10:29
story in 1902 new york-based Alfred
00:10:38
Stieglitz founded a photography group
00:10:40
called the photo secession with the
00:10:42
intention of elevating photography to
00:10:44
the status of fine art through
00:10:47
exhibitions at his little galleries
00:10:48
located at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York
00:10:52
and in his quarterly publication
00:10:54
camerawork Stieglitz shaped
00:10:56
photography's modern canon in the early
00:10:58
20th century in 1903 the same year
00:11:02
Stieglitz elected Brigman to membership
00:11:04
in the photo secession they began
00:11:06
corresponding regularly eventually
00:11:09
exchanging over 100 letters he also
00:11:12
published Britain's photographs in
00:11:13
camera work and in 1906 promoted her to
00:11:17
the rank of fellow a term used to refer
00:11:19
to the core members of the group Brigman
00:11:22
was the only photographer west of the
00:11:24
Mississippi to achieve such status he
00:11:27
championed the idea that artists offered
00:11:30
a vision beyond that of the everyday
00:11:32
world in the early years of the photo
00:11:35
secession Stieglitz celebrated the work
00:11:37
of Gertrude K Sabir he believed her
00:11:40
softly focused atmospheric photographs
00:11:42
of women and children incited a soulful
00:11:45
bodyless experience Stieglitz promoted
00:11:48
case' beer as a key member of the photo
00:11:50
secession but after Stieglitz discovered
00:11:53
Bergman's female nudes he adopted a more
00:11:56
radical social program at his gallery
00:11:58
that was grounded in the writings of
00:12:00
sexologists Sigmund Freud and half Alec
00:12:03
Ellis based on their theories Stieglitz
00:12:07
believed that an artist's erotic life
00:12:09
and sexual drive was the source of his
00:12:12
or her creative energy Brigman images of
00:12:15
the nude female body especially her nude
00:12:18
self-portraits Alfred Stieglitz an
00:12:20
authentic and powerful example of the
00:12:22
fearlessness and freedom to which women
00:12:25
could aspire in an increasingly modern
00:12:27
world Stieglitz's beliefs however were
00:12:31
at odds with what Brigman felt her
00:12:33
photographs represented the human body's
00:12:35
unity with nature nevertheless for
00:12:39
Stieglitz her images exemplified his new
00:12:42
definition of East Coast modernism
00:12:44
grounded in the sexologists theories
00:12:47
Stieglitz was so taken by her work that
00:12:50
his interest in Gertrude case' beard
00:12:52
began to wane and he soon appointed
00:12:54
Brigman as the photo secessions female
00:12:57
figurehead early in 1910 and Brigman
00:13:05
embarked on an eight-month trip to the
00:13:07
East Coast Alfred Stieglitz had promised
00:13:10
her a solo exhibition at gallery 291 the
00:13:13
trip also offered her a chance for
00:13:15
camaraderie with members of the photo
00:13:17
secession there are also rumblings in
00:13:20
her letters that she felt held back by
00:13:22
the burdens of her domestic life in
00:13:24
California as these pressures built
00:13:27
Brigman broke free of her West Coast
00:13:29
responsibilities and left for New York
00:13:31
she would eventually describe her time
00:13:34
there as one of the greatest storm
00:13:36
centers of her life upon Brickman's
00:13:40
arrival in Manhattan she found herself
00:13:42
jarred by a frenzied mechanized modern
00:13:44
city she described it as stepping to a
00:13:48
new planet with almost absolute change
00:13:50
of food and air however this was only
00:13:54
the first instance of culture shock she
00:13:56
experienced during her visit
00:13:59
by 1910 Stieglitz had embraced an
00:14:02
exhibition program at gallery 291 that
00:14:05
focused almost exclusively on depictions
00:14:07
of the female nude while she had hoped
00:14:11
for camaraderie with the photographers
00:14:13
of the photo secession
00:14:15
instead she witnessed a rampant sexual
00:14:17
liberalism that she found disrespectful
00:14:20
and at odds with her personal
00:14:22
philosophies about the human body and
00:14:24
nature she later wrote to Stieglitz that
00:14:27
the raw discussions of sexuality had
00:14:29
staggered her and that as the lone woman
00:14:32
at the gallery she had suffered while
00:14:34
the men delighted in looking together at
00:14:36
erotica and other images of the female
00:14:39
body
00:14:39
these same peers asked Brigman to sit as
00:14:43
a model for their photographs relying on
00:14:45
conventional feminine props they
00:14:47
represented her as a Victorian woman
00:14:50
rather than as she saw herself a brave
00:14:53
new modern woman Brigman never received
00:14:57
the solo exhibition Stieglitz had
00:14:59
promised her further she struggled to
00:15:01
understand how she and her work fit into
00:15:04
his broader modernist program she later
00:15:07
described her life-changing experiences
00:15:09
in New York as the wonderful terrible
00:15:12
alluding to her personal belief that
00:15:15
suffering and struggle would aid and
00:15:17
enable her personal and professional
00:15:19
growth in july 1910 and Brigman left New
00:15:25
York for the tranquility of photographer
00:15:27
Clarence White's inaugural summer school
00:15:30
class in Maine she was among a group of
00:15:32
eight students for a three-week course
00:15:34
in photography which promised technical
00:15:37
instruction in a remote coastal setting
00:15:40
Brigman wrote Stieglitz a cheery letter
00:15:42
about her time in Maine filled with
00:15:45
descriptions of herself swimming posing
00:15:47
for her classmates and having a
00:15:49
wonderful time
00:15:50
her correspondence suggests that Maine
00:15:53
offered her the respite she so
00:15:54
desperately needed after her unsettling
00:15:57
experience in New York evidence suggests
00:16:00
however that her experience in Maine
00:16:03
may not have been fully nurturing again
00:16:06
she agreed to sit as a model for her
00:16:08
teacher and fellow students who depicted
00:16:10
her as a conventional Victorian woman
00:16:12
and in most of the photographs she made
00:16:15
in Maine a diminutive female figure
00:16:18
appears against the vast landscape the
00:16:21
titles of her images from this time
00:16:23
brief infinitude the strength of
00:16:27
loneliness suggests the isolation and
00:16:30
melancholy she felt on her return trip
00:16:33
to California she stopped at the Grand
00:16:35
Canyon to make the photograph sanctuary
00:16:38
suggesting that the sublime landscape
00:16:40
offered her comfort following her
00:16:43
tumultuous trip to New York and
00:16:47
Bergman's time on the East Coast forced
00:16:50
her to address many of the issues set
00:16:52
into motion on her trip not only did she
00:16:54
begin to reassess her relationship with
00:16:57
Stieglitz and his East Coast brand of
00:16:59
modernism she also started to question
00:17:01
the domestic obligations of her marriage
00:17:03
to Martin Brigman upon her return to
00:17:07
California she decided to live apart
00:17:09
from her husband proclaiming I woke to
00:17:12
the fact that I was a human being
00:17:15
struggling against conditions I had
00:17:17
sworn to live by in peace
00:17:21
by 1912 Brigman had converted a
00:17:25
structure on the rear of her Oakland
00:17:26
property to a living working space it
00:17:30
served to support the independent
00:17:32
lifestyle and identity she desired and
00:17:34
she referred to it as her cave during
00:17:38
this period of personal crisis from 1911
00:17:41
to 1913 Brigman made some of her most
00:17:44
dramatic and violent images along the
00:17:47
northern California coast
00:17:49
she wrote to Stieglitz that this image
00:17:52
via dolorosa was about what she
00:17:56
described as the passionate struggle of
00:17:58
the evolving consciousness the fight for
00:18:01
clean strong freedom of body and soul
00:18:04
which are one she also wrote to
00:18:09
Stieglitz of the significant changes in
00:18:10
her own life describing her new weekly
00:18:13
regimen of exercise walking the hills or
00:18:16
swimming in the sea which began to
00:18:19
steady her nerves by 1913 Brigman was
00:18:24
ready to take her experiences public an
00:18:26
article in a San Francisco newspaper
00:18:28
related her story of separation from her
00:18:31
husband and her new independent life as
00:18:34
a modern woman three years ago we
00:18:37
separated he had his way of thinking and
00:18:40
I had mine and we developed along
00:18:43
different lines so now I am here working
00:18:46
out my destiny Brigman explained to the
00:18:49
press she went on to explain that
00:18:52
photography offered her a newfound
00:18:55
freedom my pictures she declared tell of
00:18:59
my freedom of soul of my emancipation
00:19:02
from fear
00:19:10
by 1915 and Brickman's colleagues and
00:19:13
friends considered her a leader in the
00:19:15
san francisco bay area artistic
00:19:17
community
00:19:17
she wrote art criticism and openly
00:19:20
shared her opinions about art
00:19:22
exhibitions and issues in photography
00:19:26
when photographer Edward Weston paid a
00:19:30
visit to the Bay Area Dorothea Lange
00:19:32
hosted a gathering for a group of
00:19:34
photographer friends the group staged a
00:19:37
satirical tableau in the style of a
00:19:39
religious passion play with Brigman
00:19:41
posing as a saint and her followers
00:19:44
gathered around her feet while the image
00:19:47
is humorous it is also a testament to
00:19:49
the respect that Brigman x' friends and
00:19:51
colleagues held for her by this time
00:19:54
however pictorialist photography was on
00:19:57
the wane Stieglitz would dissolve the
00:19:59
photo secession close his New York
00:20:01
gallery and cease publication of camera
00:20:04
work he also moved on from Brigman
00:20:07
choosing instead to champion the work of
00:20:10
a new young artist with whom he had just
00:20:12
begun a romantic relationship Georgia
00:20:15
O'Keeffe in early 1918 Stieglitz wrote
00:20:20
to Brigman that he was reviewing her
00:20:22
photographs that he had kept a few
00:20:24
months later he was photographing
00:20:26
O'Keeffe nude arranging her bare arms
00:20:29
twisting through space eventually
00:20:31
admitting that he had reinvented
00:20:33
Britain's nudes with O'Keeffe as his
00:20:36
model in doing so he imagined that he
00:20:40
had revealed O'Keefe's sexuality and
00:20:42
secret in her life as a woman it was an
00:20:46
interpretation that whether O'Keefe
00:20:48
liked it or not would stick with her
00:20:50
work even as she would later begin to
00:20:52
project her own voice into tree forms in
00:20:55
the 1930s after World War one many
00:20:59
photographers Brigman included shifted
00:21:01
their focus away from romantic and
00:21:03
impressionistic subject matter to more
00:21:05
objective views of urban and industrial
00:21:07
landscapes and close-up nature studies
00:21:10
Brigman assimilated some of these new
00:21:13
directions into her own photography
00:21:15
which are evident in her still lifes
00:21:17
and architectural stead
00:21:18
from this period she continued to travel
00:21:21
and hike throughout California during
00:21:23
these years revisiting and making prints
00:21:26
from some of her earliest negatives she
00:21:29
also chose to look inward creating a
00:21:32
series of meditative and introspective
00:21:34
portraits suggesting a heightened
00:21:36
awareness of her modern self in 1929 at
00:21:41
the age of sixty an Brigman moved to
00:21:44
Southern California where she lived for
00:21:46
the final 21 years of her life while her
00:21:49
move was urged by the need to care for
00:21:51
her elderly mother it also signaled a
00:21:53
pivotal turning point in her life and
00:21:55
creative work while living in Long Beach
00:21:59
a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean
00:22:01
Brigman renewed her deep connection to
00:22:03
the sea a source of countless childhood
00:22:06
memories she began to photograph the
00:22:09
Pacific Ocean shoreline emphasizing
00:22:11
expansive beaches and spacious skies one
00:22:15
morning she discovered what she called
00:22:17
sand erosions recounting here on the
00:22:21
shining sand I saw for the first time
00:22:24
the patterns cut by the drainage of the
00:22:27
outgoing tide poetry became Britain's
00:22:31
dominant form of self-expression
00:22:33
during the final decades of her life and
00:22:35
she eventually compiled manuscripts for
00:22:38
two books of poems paired with her
00:22:40
photographs wild flute songs remains
00:22:44
unpublished and songs of a pagan was
00:22:47
published in 1949
00:22:48
[Music]
00:22:50
Brigman remained thankful and
00:22:52
appreciative of the awareness Alfred
00:22:54
Stieglitz had brought to her photographs
00:22:56
over the years and he penned a special
00:22:58
introduction for songs of a pagan in the
00:23:01
form of a letter it declared Brigman
00:23:04
important contributions to the field of
00:23:06
photography in her poem Nirvana Brigman
00:23:15
reflects on her life her love of nature
00:23:18
and the passage of time I have left my
00:23:23
mountains I have come to the sea gone
00:23:26
are my peaks and granite wilds and the
00:23:29
glorious twist of the juniper tree my
00:23:33
heart cries back for the sheer wild
00:23:35
heights for the rocky trails and the
00:23:38
starry nights for the campfires glow and
00:23:41
the icy stream for the whisper of winds
00:23:45
and the Cougars scream
00:23:46
I have come to the shore with its
00:23:49
age-old song its endless horizons and
00:23:53
terrible deeps I have come to the ocean
00:23:56
and I belong and Brigman
00:24:03
in her poetry like her photographs
00:24:07
Brigman expressed passion mourned loss
00:24:11
dreamed of freedom and sang nature songs
00:24:16
Brigman died in 1950 at the age of 80
00:24:22
[Music]
00:24:42
[Music]
00:25:04
[Music]
00:25:23
you
