ABSTRACT
This collection of illustrations offers a visual record of Mabel Dodge Luhan’s life, as well as photographs of A. A. Brill and reproductions of their letters to each other, with the flourishes of their handwriting and signatures. The images include Mabel in her New York apartment, a painting she made for Brill, her transformation upon arrival in Taos, New Mexico, and Antonio (Tony) Luhan, the Pueblo Indian who became her fourth and final husband. Not only was Mabel widely photographed herself—as Mabel Dodge, Mabel Sterne, and Mabel Luhan—but she also embraced photography as a medium, meeting and purchasing prints from such masters as Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, commissioning photographers such as Laura Gilpin to capture her Taos estate and her beloved Tony, and sitting for portraits by her close friend Carl Van Vechten. Also shown are photographs of her friends, among them D. H. Lawrence and Robinson Jeffers, and pictures that Brill took of her Taos home during his 1938 visit. Considered together, these images speak about one woman’s daring pursuit of deeper understanding during the early years of psychoanalysis in America, her sustained and sustaining connection with her analyst through letters, and the inspiring world that she continually created around her.
