Antoinette Detcheva, pianist

Johan HagemeyerWW-1938-103472

1938·Gelatin silver print·Image: 18 × 23 cm (7 1/8 × 9 1/16 in.)

<p>Johan Hagemeyer came to the United States from Holland in 1911. Already an amateur photographer, he went to New York to meet Alfred Stieglitz, who encouraged him to pursue a career in photography. By the early 1920s Hagemeyer had a thriving portrait business in San Francisco and Carmel, California. From the 1920s through the 1940s, his studio served as a meeting place for artists and intellectuals, many of whom stepped in front of his lens—including the Bulgarian pianist Antoinette Detcheva, photographed by Hagemeyer in several poses. Hagemeyer was a close friend of noted California photographer Edward Weston, but he disagreed with Weston on the importance of sharp definition in photography, continuing to use a shallow depth of field and soft focus into the 1940s, even when exploring modernist subject matter.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1938
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: Image: 18 × 23 cm (7 1/8 × 9 1/16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Johan Hagemeyer

Artist

Johan Hagemeyer

Printmaking

Johan Hagemeyer was an American photographer born in 1884 who worked primarily in portraiture and still life during the early twentieth century. Active in California, he engaged with modernist photographic practices and the aesthetics of form and light that characterized progressive photography of his era.

Holland

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