Federal Hill, Fredericksburg, Virginia, between 1927 and 1929, Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Peacocks are probably the ultimate garden ornament — if you have the room and patience. (It takes several years for a male to grow a substantial tail covert or “train.”)
Peony garden, ca. 1890s, by Kusakabe Kimbei, via Museum of Photographic Arts on flickr.
. . . in Southwest Washington, D.C., 1941, by Edwin Rosskam, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Southwest is the capital’s smallest quadrant, located south of the National Mall along the Potomac River. After the Civil War, it was populated by freed Blacks to its east and Scotch, Irish, German, and Eastern European immigrants to its west. Its old neighborhoods were largely destroyed in some very questionable “urban renewal” in the 1950s.
Summer specializes in time, slows it down almost to dream…
— Jennifer Grotz, from “Late Summer“
Professional photographers Gertrude Käsebier and Frances Benjamin Johnston eating together on a hotel patio in Venice, Italy, 1905, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Johnston — from Washington, D.C. — and Käsebier — from New York City — had traveled across the Atlantic at the invitation of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. On the same trip, they also visited France, Switzerland, and Italy.
The older and more successful Gertrude Käsebier had been born in a log cabin in Iowa in 1852. After marrying* a successful businessman of aristocratic German origins and having three children, she began to study photography at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Within ten years, by the late 1890s, she had opened a studio on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
At the time of this photo, she was “one of the best known photographers in the United States,” according to her Library of Congress biography. Her portraits of women and children were shown in major exhibitions and won her critical acclaim and financial independence.
Käsebier’s ability to discern the complexities of situations helped her achieve conflicting goals. She aimed to be associated with fine art and the upper classes but she enjoyed the relatively déclassé technical art of photography. She also wanted to earn a living, a desire that brought criticism from [Alfred] Stieglitz for sacrificing art to commerce, while society frowned on women participating in any kind of business. At a time when a salesman challenged women’s right to purchase high quality photographic equipment, Käsebier encouraged women to enter the professional world. For example, she befriended and supported Frances Benjamin Johnston, whose ambition and need to earn an income may have surpassed her own.
Kasebier worked until the mid-1920s, when she turned her studio over to her daughter, Hermine.
Johnston had a long career as well, ultimately specializing in architectural and garden photography. She retired at age 81 in 1945.
*It was an unhappy marriage and inspired her to make this photo.
Beatrice Baxter Ruyl on the chaise lounge with Barbara, and Mr. Ruyl seated with Ruth, 1913, by F. Holland Day, via The Louise Imogen Guiney Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The photo was probably taken at Five Islands, Maine, where both F. Holland Day and the Ruyl family had homes.
Day was part of the pictorialist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its photographers posed or otherwise manipulated their images to create ‘fine art.’
Baxter Ruyl illustrated children’s books and also drew for the Boston Herald. She frequently served as a model for Day and Gertrude Käsebier.
Happy Labor Day weekend in the U.S.!
enclos*ure 