Anne Brigman was a ship captain’s wife who trained as a painter but turned to photography in 1902. A year later, Stieglitz invited her to become a member of the Photo-Secession, and in 1906 she was elected a Fellow, the sole photographer west of the Mississippi to be so designated. Best known for photographs of the female nude, Brigman made nature her studio. She hiked into California’s spectacular and still relatively remote Sierra Nevada Mountains toting a four-by-five camera, wooden tripod, photographic plates, and gear for extended stays. In addition to the European Symbolism that so heavily influenced her East Coast counterparts, Brigman drew on pagan mythology, Romanticism, and her childhood exposure to the beliefs of native Hawaiians for inspiration, as in this poetic evocation of a high priestess of nature.
