A Different Slant of Light

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In 1905, Adelaide Hanscom Leeson published an illustrated version of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to rave reviews on the west coast. This work, part of the Pictorialist movement, was both beautiful and daring.

Soon after the height of this event, her studio was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. She moved to Seattle, fell in love, eloped, married, and became a mother. She kept on working, but her work no longer expressed the creativity of her earlier work.

Her husband, a mining engineer, joined the British army in WWI and was killed in his first battle, a hero. Adelaide ceased her work, and descended into a hell of auditory hallucinations and paranoid fears.

This web site will look at her life, her work, and these issues in an attempt to understand her as an artist, a wife, a mother, and an individual.

 

Why?
  • Was it the suppression of her creativity?
  • Guilt over the marital problems that preceded Gerald's death?
  • The chemicals she was exposed to as a photographer?
  • Menopause?
  • The suppression of women?
  • The treatment she received from her family?