Silent Night … All Is Calm

Peace be with you today and throughout the holidays.

Gertrude Kasebier—creator of today's featured photograph, The Manger—began her artistic studies at the age of thirty-seven after her children had grown up. While studying painting at Pratt Institute in New York, she began to explore photography. In 1897 she opened a photography studio in New York, specializing in portraits of women and children.

Kasebier was a founding member of both the Photo-Secession group and the Pictorial Photographers of America. A favorite of Alfred Stieglitz, she was the featured artist in the premier issue of Camera Work. The Manger was one of the principal illustrations.

Describing The Manger, art critic Charles Caffin wrote that Kasebier's use of light in the simple setting "fills the place with heaven and surrounds the figures with divinity." However, Kasebier did not explicitly support a religious interpretation of this image. She encouraged friends and critics to regard it as an artistic exercise in the effects of light in a composition of white on white.

Source: Merry A. Foresta. American Photographs: The First Century (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996).

Pictured: Gertrude Kasebier, 1852–1934, The Manger, 1899, platinum print, 12 1/2 x 10 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Charles Isaacs.