The Dying Cedar 1909

Anne Brigman made this photograph, The Dying Cedar, sometime in the early twentieth century with a camera and a lot of skill. It's not just a picture, it's a process, you can feel the artist coaxing the image out of the light. There's a dreamy quality to this black and white print, an almost painterly softness. The texture is all. Look at the way the light catches the curves of the tree trunk, and how the figure seems to merge with the wood. The woman and tree become one. It’s as if Brigman wants to show us the dance of nature and humanity, the way we’re intertwined. The darks are deep, the lights whisper. This kind of photographic art feels connected to the symbolist painters like Odilon Redon, all about feeling and not really about hard facts. It's like a conversation between different art forms, a shared exploration of what it means to be human.