Gum bichromate over platinum print
Propelled by their conviction that photography was art, the Photo-Secessionists turned to the artist portrait as a way to elevate photographers and the ways they were perceived. This form of artistic collaboration was enacted among close friends like Gertrude Käsebier and Clarence H. White, who joined together to create a personal rendering of White and his family at home. It also documented partnerships of inspiration and admiration. Edward Steichen, for example, was heavily influenced by Käsebier’s photography, especially her portraiture. In Steichen’s image of Käsebier, he closely crops his lens on her, keeping surrounding spatial detail slight to encourage a more explicit focus on his subject.
504: A Little Gallery of the Photo-Secession, 2025
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Gertrude Käsebier
American, 1852–1934 88 works online,” the photographer Gertrude Käsebier asked. Trained at the progressive Pratt Institute in the late 19th century, she quickly established herself as a pictorial photographer—part of a movement devoted to the medium as an art form—and focused on portraits and themes such as motherhood.
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A Little Gallery of the Photo-Secession
Gallery 504In 1902, a group of photographers banded together in protest against the conventional view of the medium as a mechanical tool.
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