[Gargoyle in Latin Quarter]
Photograph
[Gargoyle in Latin Quarter]
1901
Gum bichromate print
Image: 7 3/8 × 5 11/16 in. (18.7 × 14.5 cm)
Mount: 7 9/16 × 5 7/8 in. (19.2 × 15 cm)
Matted: 17 × 13 7/8 in. (43.2 × 35.2 cm)
Gift of Hermine Turner, 1971
1971.0042.0026
Inscriptions [verso inaccessible]
TextGertrude Käsebier was a founding member of the Photo-Secession, an organization devoted to promoting photography as an artistic medium. The group came about as a reaction to the increasing number of amateur snapshooters after the introduction of the Kodak camera. Käsebier, a trained painter, chose to print many of her photographs using gum bichromate, a technique involving pigment applied with a brush. Her work displays a soft tonal range and painterly quality—characteristics of the Pictorialist aesthetic promoted by the Photo-Secessionists. When divisions emerged within the group, Käsebier and Clarence White left to cofound the Pictorial Photographers of America in 1916.
