Untitled - Issues of Image Magazine - George Eastman House

chose to exhibit in her retrospective at the
Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in
1929, 21 suggests the thoughtful artistic side of
Henri's personality. His gaze is averted; head
and relaxed long-fingered hands are emphasized
as if to symbolize thought and dextrous
creativity. The outline of brushstrokes is perhaps,
in part, a tribute to Henri's own painting.
The attraction of this print depends largely on
the rich blacks (doubtless achieved with multiple
printing) and the palpable texture of the
paper, qualities which may be appreciated in
exhibition but are lost in reproduction.
Mrs. Kasebier's three portraits of Henri do
not imply sequence; they suggest instead an
understanding that each portrait might show a
different aspect of his personality. But, so far
as I know, these variants were not exhibited
together. Implicit in Kasebier's work, however,
is the concept of multiple portraiture. Years
later, Stieglitz in his Georgia O'Keeffe portraits,
articulated the idea, full grown.
It was often said in Kasebier's time that she
set the example for commercial photographers
to discard their props and backdrops. We now
know that the channels through which her
work became pervasive were the widely circulated
popular magazines as well as photographic
journals. It is easy to understand that
through mass circulation, she created a new
portrait fashion.
Mrs. Kasebier's effect on her Photo-Secession
colleagues is more subtle, and harder to
define. Even before 1900, Kasebier provided an
example to the Stieglitz group of new approaches
to portraiture. By 1900, she had
shown that portraiture could unite commerce
and art. 22 This example would have been
meaningful to Edward Steichen, whose friendship
with Mrs. Kasebier in Paris, 1901, impelled
him to write "She has been goodness
itself to me and pumped much new energy and
enthusiasm into me." 23 Mrs. Kasebier would
have been a model to Steichen that art, photography,
and a means of making a livelihood
could be compatible in commercial portrait
photography.
Alvin Langdon Coburn worked with Kasebier
for about a year around 1902-1903; 24 he surely
knew her portrait methods. (Kasebier's portraits
of Coburn, apparently made during these
years, are in the collections at IMP/GEH and
at The Museum of Modern Art.) Coburn's approach
to portraiture, as he tells of it in his
autobiography, recalls Kasebier's:
A photographic portrait needs more collaboration
between sitter and artist than a
painted portrait. A painter can get acquainted
with his subject in the course of
several sittings, but usually the photographer
does not have this advantage. You
can get to know an artist or an author to
a certain extent from his pictures or books
before meeting him in the flesh, and I always
tried to acquire as much of this
previous information as possible before
venturing in quest of great men, in order
to gain an idea of the mind and character
of the person I was to portray. 25
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