Best of
Photography

1949

Halfway to Freedom


Margaret Bourke-White - 1949
    With plates, including portraits, and an endpaper map.

Songs of a Pagan


Anne Brigman - 1949
    This collection of poetry and photography was published a year before her death.Brigman's photographs frequently focused on the female nude, dramatically situated in natural landscapes or trees. Many of her photos were taken in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in carefully selected locations and featuring elaborately staged poses. Brigman often featured herself as the subject of her images, such as "Soul of the Blasted Pine", for which she received the Birmingham Society's first silver medal. After shooting the photographs, she would extensively touch up the negatives with paints, pencil, or superimposition. Brigman's deliberately counter-cultural images suggested bohemianism and female liberation. Her work challenged the establishment's cultural norms and defied convention, instead embracing pagan antiquity. The raw emotional intensity and barbaric strength of her photos contrasted with the carefully calculated and composed images of Stieglitz and other modern photographers.