GERTRUDE S. KASEBIER Serbonne 1903 Signed Halftone Print 7.1x5.5” cornered to dark gray brown Camera Work page from Camera Work Number 1. Signed on page below bring right side. ASG# GSK/1024

Provenance: John Francis Strauss Camera Set. Straus was a co-editor and many of the early volumes had signed plates. Sotheby’s Photographs 10/5/94 #10

Gertrude Kasebier (1852 - 1934) Born in Fort Des Moines, Iowa, Gertrude Stanton was passionate about painting and drawing from early childhood. When she was twenty-two she married Eduard. Kasebier longed to be an artist and after her children reached adolescence, she enrolled in the Pratt Institute to study drawing and painting. By 1894 she had added photography to her techniques and that year won two photography contests. On a yearlong trip to Europe she realized that photography was her vocation. While in Germany she studied with Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, the same chemist that Stieglitz had worked with.

She opened her own studio at age thirty-six in an effort to bring in income and further her career as a photographer. She began exhibiting her photographs at the Boston Camera Club in 1896 and at the Pratt Institute. Kasebier became acquainted with Alfred Stieglitz who admired her work for its independent artistic expression and promoted it in his publication Camera Notes. He also organized solo exhibitions of her work at the Camera Club of New York. By 1901 her photographs had been exhibited in Paris and London, and she became the first woman elected to The Linked Ring of art photographers. She traveled to Paris with Edward Steichen where she photographed August Rodin. She was one of the founding members of the Photo-Secession group of whom Stieglitz was the leader. The first issue of his Camera Work, released in 1902, contained six illustrations and two articles by Gertrude Kasebier. Motherhood and portraiture were Kasebier favorite themes. She helped elevate the photographic portrait to the status of an art form.

Excellent. Minor wear, sunning on Camerawork page where matted print was exposed