Blessed Art Thou Among Women

A young girl dressed in mostly dark clothes stands on the threshold of a well-appointed home. Her mother, in a white, flowing gown, gently leans over, as if ready to send her daughter into the world. Gertrude Kasebier’s soft-focus technique, representative of the Pictorialist style of art photography at the turn of the twentieth century, helps to make this tender portrait of domesticity and motherhood—the artist’s favorite themes—a moving and symbolic image. Both the photograph’s title and the picture on the wall in the background refer to key moments of motherhood in biblical history, the Annunciation and the Visitation. Kasebier reinterpreted the theme using the Boston poet and children’s book author Agnes Rand Lee and her daughter Peggy as models.