hairline around image within plate impression

Original copy for this entry posted to Facebook on July 22, 2012:

The photograph “Mushrooms by the Sea” is a pure anomaly in the canon of Alfred Stieglitz. Included as the final photogravure frontispiece in the December, 1895 issue of The Photographic Times, the image has seemingly eluded scholarship. Where was it taken, and who are the subjects in this photograph? Might it have been done at Katwyk Beach in North Holland around the time Stieglitz visited there? The bathing costume of the woman at left and her hat might be a clue. Is it Dutch or could this seaside view have been taken on Coney Island back in the United States? The lone reference I’ve found online is at Yale, where it is identified as being from 1896 and included with other photographs in an early Stieglitz scrapbook.