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KÄSEBIER, GERTRUDE
KÄSEBIER, GERTRUDE (1852–1934)
American photographer
Gertrude Käsebier came to photography relatively late in
life and was soon among the most esteemed photograph-
ic portraitists of her day, successful both artistically and
commercially. From the end of 1897 for the next thirty
years, she operated a prominent portrait studio in New
York City. Her work was vigorously championed by Al-
fred Stieglitz following their meeting in 1898, but within
a decade, the two had begun to fall out over aesthetic
and practical differences. Indeed, throughout her career,
she maintained a determined independence, frequently
holding what she termed “heretical views” with regard
to prevailing commercial and artistic trends.
Married and the mother of three, Käsebier fi rst made
photographs using her family as a subject in 1885. In
1889, at the age of thirty-seven, she enrolled in the Pratt
Institute in Brooklyn to study painting. Following her
course of study she turned to artistic photography and,
in early 1894, submitted the winning photograph to a
juried contest in the Quarterly Illustrator. This prompted
criticism from her painting masters for her involvement
both with photography and with the illustrated press.
In spring of 1894, she traveled to Europe, producing a
series of photographs of French peasants, reminiscent
of the paintings of Jean-François Millet, which she
subsequently published in the Monthly Illustrator. In
Germany, she undertook a brief apprenticeship with a
chemist in order to learn the chemical basis of photog-
raphy, before returning to New York in 1895.
Käsebier launched herself into professional portrait
photography in 1896. After apprenticing with a com-
mercial photographer, she opened her own studio in
Manhattan in the winter of 1897–1898. Her style of
portraiture dispensed with conventional props, focusing
on softly lit heads against dark backgrounds. In addition
to her fashionable clientele, she began photographing
Plains Indians from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Company
in April 1898, producing a series of remarkably intimate
character studies.
Käsebier quickly made a name for herself as a picto-
rial photographer. In June 1898, she introduced herself
to Stieglitz, leading fi gure in the Camera Club of New
York. At the 1898 Photographic Salon of Philadelphia,
with Stieglitz on the jury, Käsebier exhibited her recent
work and gave a lecture on the need for an artistic ap-
proach to portraits emphasizing simplicity, naturalness,
and directness. She recommended that artistically
trained women take up “modern photography” as a
“vocation” (Käsebier, 86).
Blurring distinctions between artistic and commercial
photography, Käsebier charged a premium for her por-
traits and favored the fi ne platinum print over the popular
gelatin silver print. Stieglitz enthusiastically exhibited
her photographs at the Camera Club in February 1899,
and in April featured them in Camera Notes. At the
1899 Philadelphia Salon, Käsebier served on the jury,
alongside Clarence H. White and Fred Holland Day,
and received praise for The Manger, a luminous image
of a gauze-draped Madonna with child. British actress
Ellen Terry would famously buy this picture for $100,
an unheard-of sum for a photograph at the time.
At the 1900 Philadelphia Salon, Käsebier achieved
critical acclaim for Blessed Art Thou Among Women
(1899), an allegorical photograph of a young girl cross-
ing a threshold into public life. Also in 1900, her work
was exhibited abroad in Paris and London. In October,
she and British photographer Carine Cadby became
the fi rst women elected into the elite Brotherhood of
the Linked Ring. At this time, Käsebier began a series
of portraits for the illustrated magazine World’s Work,
photographing such eminent fi gures as author Mark
Twain and educator Booker T. Washington. She was
achieving success simultaneously on three fronts:
commercially in her portrait practice, artistically in
exhibitions and photography journals, and publicly in
the illustrated press.
Following a stay with Eduard Steichen in Paris in the
summer of 1901, Käsebier became an ardent practitioner
of the gum bichromate printing process. Subsequently,
she both alternated and combined platinum and gum
printing techniques in her work, experimenting with
different versions of the same image. Her prints might
feature crisp photographic detail or moody handling of
the emulsion, depending on the situation.
In 1902, Stieglitz included Käsebier as a founding
member of the Photo-Secession, and in January 1903, he
devoted the fi rst issue of the Photo-Secession’s deluxe
journal, Camera Work, to her work. In 1905, several
pastoral images by Käsebier, among them, Happy Days
(1903), were featured in Camera Work 10 and exhib-
ited at Stieglitz’s newly opened Little Galleries of the
Photo-Secession.
The theme of women’s emotional experience recurs
throughout Käsebier’s work. In 1902 she produced
Portrait of Miss N., a frankly erotic depiction of the
young showgirl Evelyn Nesbit poised seductively with
an open pitcher tipped toward the viewer, symbolically
suggesting the girl’s entry into sexual life. Two years
later, Käsebier’s wrenching portrait of the poet Agnes
Lee, entitled Heritage of Motherhood, depicted a griev-
ing mother in a bleak landscape.
The emphasis on depth of feeling in Käsebier’s pho-
tographs led to divergent assessments of her work in- An article by Mary Fanton Roberts (pseudonym
Giles Edgerton) in the April issue of Craftsman praised
Käsebier’s investigation of “Photography as an Emo-
tional Art.” In response, Charles H. Caffi n, previously
a strong supporter of Käsebier, wrote a stinging satire,