As a child from Hawaii and longtime resident of Northern California,
Anne Brigman reveled in the stunning natural scenery of the American West,
especially the Sierra Mountains. She turned to photography around 1900 when a
violent thunderstorm led her to visualize human forms as parts of trees and
rocks. Posing her friends amid wind-beaten junipers, Brigman shows a deep
affinity between humans and nature that she embellished by making
interpositives, or transparencies of her original negatives, which she reworked
with paint and pencil before printing to achieve an indistinct smoky effect. Brigman
liberated the female nude—usually the domain of male photographers working with
models in studios—by revealing a fearless woman surviving the elements (the
artist had separated from her husband the year before she took this photograph
on a camping trip).