Justema by Mather, ca. 1923

When Margrethe Mather (1885 or 1886-1952) met Billy Justema in 1922, she was 36 and he was 17. Through spending time with him, Mather found a way out of her grief over the unexpected suicide of her close friend Florence Deshon. Through their relationship, Justema searched for a state of mind that would allow him to define both his artistic path and his sexuality. Mather photographed him as an enigma, as he was at the time to himself, in the process creating a portfolio to rival that of Alfred Stieglitz’s images of Georgia O’Keeffe. I could point out the sure compositional structure that informs Billy Justema in a Kimono (above), the curves and angles that form a harmonious whole, all things typical of Mather’s work. [quoted from The Blue Lantern on blogspot]