Hagemeyer Portrait of Suffragist Sara Bard Field
Portrait photograph of Sara Bard Field.
[Carmel, Calif: 1927].
Price: $2,500.00
About the item
Vintage gelatin silver print, bust portrait in profile. Signed and dated in pencil ("Johan Hagemeyer, 1927") on the mount. 1 vols. 22 x 16.5 cm. (8-3/4 x 6-1/2 inches). Hagemeyer Portrait of Suffragist Sara Bard Field. Matted. Fine. Docketed on verso of mount in pencil, "#1"
Item #225931
Magnificent portrait of the great suffragist, reformer, activist, free-thinker, and poet, Sara Bard Field (1882-1974). Field was also the passionate lover of the anarchist C.E.S. Wood, and the couple lived together in a celebrated "free union" first in San Francisco, then in Los Gatos, "where they built a house ... that became a gathering place for Bay area writers, artists, and political activists" (American National Biography); and where the famous Bay area photographer Johan Hagemeyer (1884-1962), made this fine, indelible portrait, in the year her first volume of poems appeared, THE PALE WOMAN.
According to THE BANCROFT LIBRARY'S on line "Guide to the Johan Hagemeyer Photograph Collection":
"In late 1916, just prior to [Hagemeyer's] return to California - and despite having had little photographic experience - Hagemeyer visited Stieglitz's 291 salon in New York City. The two developed an immediate rapport, and the meeting proved to be decisive for Hagemeyer. "We talked," Hagemeyer later recalled, "and he practically, by way of speaking, made me follow photography. I had already gone overboard for it" (OHT 22).
"Back in California, Hagemeyer first apprenticed with a Berkeley-based commercial portrait photographer named McCullagh. Soon afterwards he moved south to Pasadena and in early 1918 met Edward Weston, already by then an accomplished photographer based in Tropico (now Glendale). The two took an immediate liking to each other and formed a friendship and working partnership that was of mutual benefit: Weston opened his home and studio to the upstart Hagemeyer, and Hagemeyer introduced the relatively unschooled Weston to new worlds of intellectual and aesthetic learning. The two would have a profound influence on each others' artistic development for years to come. (Arch. [see essays by Lorenz and Schaefer])
"Hagemeyer's talent developed rapidly and by the early 1920s he was exhibiting his work in many important photographic salons and garnering much popular and critical acclaim. After moving to San Francisco at the end of World War One, Hagemeyer soon discovered the intellectual and artistic colony of Carmel-by-the-Sea. In 1923 he established his first studio in Carmel and would remain anchored there for over 20 years. In 1924 he established the town's first art gallery - based out of his studio - where he exhibited the works of local painters, sculptors and photographers and hosted very popular musical performances. Shortly thereafter Hagemeyer opened a second studio in San Francisco, whose clientele could be rivaled by that of Carmel only during the smaller town's summer vacation season. In 1927, he was appointed staff photographer of the artistic/literary magazine The San Franciscan ... "
