Gertrude Käsebier

This portrait of Miss N is Gertrude Käsebier’s most famous tableau vivant, a “living picture” that draws on the conventions and traditions of painting. The mysterious Miss N is Evelyn Nesbit. Notorious for her self-styled sensuality, Nesbit was a popular model for photographers and painters in New York and Philadelphia. Not content to play a passive role, she participates here in this creation, transforming herself into a work of art.

Gertrude Käsebier produced a series of photographs focused on human relationships and loving moments between mother and child. Although at first glance this image reads almost like a snapshot, it was in fact carefully planned and composed.  Käsebier has captured an asymmetrical image clearly styled after the Japanese woodblock prints much in fashion at the turn of the 20th century. In order to achieve asymmetry, the subject has carefully bent her right leg at the knee and leaned her head in the opposite direction, forming a strong diagonal line that connects with the foliage in the top right corner of the image. An additional Japanese print aesthetic, called truncation, appears in the eccentric, extreme cropping of the tree. The combination of diagonal asymmetry and truncation allows the weight of the picture to shift to the right-hand corner.