woman to be elected to the Linked Ring. Some of
her Secessionist colleagues considered her not to be
sufficiently interested in the rules of composition,
and her Christian motives were not sometimes well
accepted by her peers, however, she was very pop-
ular among the public in general.
Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966) was not a
founding member of the Secession, but he was
admitted in 1903 when he was only in his early
twenties (as well as to the Linked Ring that same
year). Born in Boston, he was a distant cousin to
that city’s most famous photographer, F. Holland
Day, whom he met in 1898. He received his first
camera very early in life and some of his photo-
graphs were exhibited in his hometown as early as
- Later, in 1900, nine of his photographs were
shown at a Royal Photographic Society exhibition
in London, and he had regular exhibitions of his
work in New York and Great Britain where he
relocated in 1912. Like Gertrude Ka ̈sebier he also
had a professional studio in New York, which he
had opened on New York’s Fifth Avenue in 1902.
His best known photographs are portraits, particu-
larly of writers and painters. He is also regarded for
his urban landscapes. His famous 1912 photograph
The Octopus, prefigures his turn into abstraction-
ism, for after photographing Vorticist painters
Wyndham Lewis and Edward Wadsworth, he
began in the late 1910s experimenting with Vorti-
cism (which featured many of the same ideas as
Cubism) applied to photography, which he dubbed
‘‘vortographs. ’’ Coburn was also a collector of
photography’s early masters.
If his own work was not important enough,
Clarence H. White (1871–1925) might be known
only by teaching some of the most important
photographers of the next generation (including
Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White, and
Paul Outerbridge, Jr.) in his school at Columbia
University in New York. Like others of the Seces-
sionist group he discovered photography by means
of modern painting. Until 1904, before embracing
photography as a profession, he had been a book-
keeper in Newark, Ohio. His best known photo-
graph,Ring Toss(1899), is an example of the use of
light and of spontaneity. He was also a member of
the Linked Ring, elected in 1900.
The German-American Frank Eugene (1865–
1936), a Secession co-founder, had studied painting
under Wilhelm von Diez at the Munich Academy of
Art as well as in New York and Paris. Around the
turn of the century he had created a number of nudes
in which the photograph clearly showed the brush-
work by which the photo-emulsion had been laid on,
an effect that called attention to unique photographic
qualities (the emulsion) and referred to painting as
well. He became known as a ‘‘painter-photographer’’
and first came to the attention of a wider public as a
photographer in 1899 on the occasion of a solo
exhibition in the Camera Club of New York. He
was elected to the Linked Ring in 1900. From 1913
he taught in Leipzig at the Academy of Graphic Arts
and Book Design and at the School of Photography
in Munich, where he disseminated his unique techni-
que to a large number of student photographers.
Eva Watson-Schu ̈tze, who along with Gertrude
Ka ̈sebier, represented the significant female contin-
gency of photographers at the turn of the century,
was originally from New Jersey, but after having
briefly opened a professional studio in Atlantic City
and in Philadelphia, lived in the Chicago area with
her husband after their marriage in 1901. She had
exhibited in most of the major Pictorialist exhibi-
tions of the era, including Day’s ‘‘The New School
of American Photography’’ of 1900 and had been
elected to the Linked Ring the following year.
Although she appeared in the first photographic
exhibition held at the Little Galleries of the Photo-
Secession, residing in Chicago she felt isolated from
the movement and did not appear in subsequent
exhibitions. She is especially associated with the
Arts and Crafts colony in Woodstock, New York,
where she painted; her best-known photographic
work is perhapsWoman with Lily, 1905.
John G. Bullock (1854–1939), a pharmacy grad-
uate, was another of the founding members of the
Secessionist group. He started photographing in
the 1880s. He participated in the Photo-Secessio-
nist group activities until 1910, when his differences
with Alfred Stieglitz caused him to leave the group.
Founding Secession member Robert S. Redfield
(1849–1923) had served as President of the Photo-
graphic Society of Philadelphia, and was known
for his bucolic, richly realized landscapes.
William B. Dyer had been a professional photo-
grapher since 1897, publishing the book Love-
Lyrics with Life Pictures by William B. Dyerin- He was elected a member of the Linked
Ring, and championed by Clarence White to Alfred
Stieglitz was one of the group’s founders. His work
was published inCamera NotesandCamera Work.
The American George H. Seeley (1880–1955)
started exhibiting in 1904, and between 1906 and
1910 a number of his pictures were published in
Camera Work.He specialized in nudes and studies
with symbolistic overtones and his works displayed
a remarkable use of light and shadow. He is best
known, however, as a publicist.
Joseph Turner Keily (1869–1914) was a New
York lawyer involved in photography since the
PHOTO-SECESSIONISTS