Lot Essay
Barbara Michals in her monograph on the artist comments: "From the 1890s on, outdoor photography had been a favorite summer occupation of Käsebier's. In 1912 she grappled with the challenge of Newfoundland's dim, gray light, making pictures whose stylistic departures reflected her flexible nature. ... In 1912 Käsebier visited (John Murray) Anderson's family in St. Johns, Newfoundland, while he scouted for antiques. ..."
In Newfoundland Trip 1912, Käsebier's handwritten commentary on her experience, she reflected: I began to get my bearings and tried photographing without sunlight. The weirdness of it all seemed like a stage setting. The quality of the light and the coloring of the landscape in consequence was different from anything which I had ever seen in nature. The heavens were always gray with beautiful cloud effects; the scrubby pine trees were black against the mountains of dark gray; the many lakes reflected in turn the gray of the sky. ... A paradise for the painter, the etcher. A great despair to the photographer, because of the darkness.(collection of Mason E. Turner)
"When Newfoundland's weird light did not conform to her tonal approach, she adopted a more linear, architectonic style. ... an angular, restless quality that may have been induced by Cubist paintings shown at 291 or by Coburn's increasingly geometric style. Whatever the source, colleagues and critics immediately recognized the merits of her Newfoundland photographs."(cf. Käsebier, The Photographer and Her Photographs, pp. 139-40)
In Newfoundland Trip 1912, Käsebier's handwritten commentary on her experience, she reflected: I began to get my bearings and tried photographing without sunlight. The weirdness of it all seemed like a stage setting. The quality of the light and the coloring of the landscape in consequence was different from anything which I had ever seen in nature. The heavens were always gray with beautiful cloud effects; the scrubby pine trees were black against the mountains of dark gray; the many lakes reflected in turn the gray of the sky. ... A paradise for the painter, the etcher. A great despair to the photographer, because of the darkness.(collection of Mason E. Turner)
"When Newfoundland's weird light did not conform to her tonal approach, she adopted a more linear, architectonic style. ... an angular, restless quality that may have been induced by Cubist paintings shown at 291 or by Coburn's increasingly geometric style. Whatever the source, colleagues and critics immediately recognized the merits of her Newfoundland photographs."(cf. Käsebier, The Photographer and Her Photographs, pp. 139-40)