Lorrin Thurston (center), Brigman’s cousin and leading firebrand of the haole overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, with Jack London (left) at the Nu'uanu Pali

Anne Brigman’s imaginary photographic universe had its origins in her childhood experience of nature as paradisal, of an island culture still outside modernity and alive with a spirit world. Her picture of herself as a child wandering through that landscape of sensuous pleasure responds to the representation of the Pacific in the Western mind, a stereotype that was set in place in the...