Heritage of Motherhood

Although she began making photographs only at age 37, Gertrude Käsebier's evocative images of marriage and motherhood quickly attracted Alfred Stieglitz, who published five of her first prints in his quarterly journal Camera Work. A founding member of his Photo-Secession movement, Käsebier staged simple, painterly compositions and produced exquisite handmade prints in the Pictorialist tradition. In this portrait, her friend Agnes Lee sits alone before a rocky landscape, grieving the recent death of her daughter. Drawing from her own unhappy marriage and experience as a mother, Käsebier staged a contemporary Lamentation scene, though its abstract title suggests a more universal statement about the trials and sorrows of motherhood.