Cleft of the Rock

About the Photographer

Brigman, Anne Wardrope

American, 1869-1950

Anne W. Brigman, a late nineteenth-century pictorialist photographer, was born in Hawaii but spent most of her life in California. She used natural images combined with the female figure to create mysteriously poetic images. Brigman used cedar trees almost exclusively in her female nude images. She was one of the first women to photograph nudes in a wilderness landscape. Her images deliberately resemble charcoal drawings, as she sought to capture the spirit of her subject rather than a faithful reproduction.