Getty Museum
The Manger (Ideal Motherhood)
Creator
Gertrude KäsebierAmerican Photographer · 1852–1934
All works by this person →> My children and their children have been my closest thought, but from the first days of dawning individuality, I have longed unceasingly to make pictures of people...to make likenesses that are biographies, to bring out in each photograph the essential personality. > > --Gertrude Käsebier > > Käsebier's career in art followed from her first career as a mother. After studying painting at Pratt In
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1899
- Medium
- Platinum print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
On the vanguard of American Pictorialism, a movement that sought to elevate photography's status by emulating painting, Käsebier believed the medium to be a means of self-expression. Her shadowy portrait of a mother and child set against the simple geometry of a stable stall demonstrates her sense of design as well as her reverence for maternity. With a transparent veil and classical draperies, she transformed an ordinary woman into the archetypal Madonna of religious painting. The atmospheric contrast of light and shadow, soft focus, and the velvety surface of the platinum print heighten the painterly effect.
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