May 16, 2024 - Sale 2669

Sale 2669 - Lot 179

Price Realized: $ 13,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
ANNE BRIGMAN (1869-1950)
Quest. Silver print, the image measuring 7x9¼ inches (17.8x23.5 cm.), the mount 10x12 inches (25.4x30.5 cm.), with Brigman's signature in pencil on mount recto, and her title in pencil on mount verso. 1931

Anne Brigman's astonishing life and career is brilliantly contextualized and described in the Nevada Museum of Art's retrospective volume titled Anne Brigman, A Visionary in Modern Photography. In the volume Susan Ehrens writes about this image, which used Brigman's niece and her husband as models. The image combines two negatives, one of the couple and the other an image she made of sand erosions, a common theme during this period. Ehrens writes, "The dynamic pattern of the sand intertwines with the two figures to create a veil of mystery, transforming what might have been a traditional portrait into something more evocative." (p. 212)

Reproduced: Ann M. Wolfe, et alia, Anne Brigman, A Visionary in Modern Photography (Rizzoli/Electa and the Nevada Museum of Art), p. 110-11 and fig. 52