Sadakichi Hartmann

Born to a Japanese mother and a German father, Sadakichi Hartmann began his career as a freelance art critic in the 1890s. Famous for his bohemian lifestyle, he became one of America’s few recognized authorities on Japanese culture following the publication of his book, Japanese Art, in 1904. In his 1910 book on artist James McNeill Whistler, he anticipated in many ways the modernist directions that contemporary painting would shortly take. Among Hartmann’s most significant contributions to art criticism were his writings on photography. Between 1896 and 1916, he penned more than 650 articles on the subject.
This 1898 photograph was created in New York City by Zaida Ben-Yusuf, a female photographer whose work Hartmann championed. About her, he wrote, “it is doubtful if there is in the entire United States a more interesting exponent of portrait photography than she is.”