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Alfred Stieglitz was an influential photographer who spent his life
fighting for the recognition of photography as a valid art form. He was
a pioneering photographer, editor and gallery owner who played pivotal
role in defining and shaping modernism in the United States. (Lowe 23).
He took pictures in a time when photography was considered as only a
scientific curiosity and not an art. As the controversy over the art
value of photography became widespread, Stieglitz began to fight for
the recognition of his chosen medium. This battle would last his whole
life.
Edward Stieglitz, father of Alfred, was born in Germany in 1833. He
grew up on a farm, loved nature, and was an artist at heart. Legend has
it that, independent and strong willed, Edward Stieglitz ran away from
home at the age of sixteen because his mother insisted on upon
starching his shirt after he had begged her not to (Lowe 23). Edward
would later meet Hedwig Warner and they would have their first son,
Alfred. Alfred was the first of six born to his dad Edward and mom
Hedwig. As a child Alfred was remembered as a boy with thick black
hair, large dark eyes, pale fine skin, a delicately modeled mouth with
a strong chin (Peterson 34). In 1871 the Stieglitz family lived at 14
East 60th street in Manhattan. No buildings stood between Central Park
and the Stieglitz family home. As Stieglitz got older he started to
show interest in photography, posting every photo he could find on his
bedroom wall. It wasn't until he got older that his photography
curiosity begin to take charge of his life.
Stieglitz formally started photography at the age of nineteen,
during his first years at the Berlin Polytechnic School. At this time
photography was in its infancy as an art form. Alfred learned the fine
arts of photography by watching a local photographer in Berlin working
in the store's dark room. After making a few pictures of his room and
himself, he enrolled in a photochemistry course. This is where his
photography career would begin. His earliest public recognition came
from England and Germany. It began in 1887 when Stieglitz won the first
of his many first prizes in a competition. The judge who gave him the
award was Dr. P.H. Emerson, then the most widely known English advocate
of photography as an art (Doty 23). Dr. Emerson later wrote to
Stieglitz about his work sent in to the competition: "It is perhaps
late for me to express my admiration of the work you sent into the
holiday competition. It was the spontaneous work in the exhibition and
I was delighted with much of it", (Bry 11). The first photographer
organization Alfred joined while still in Berlin, was the German
Society of the Friends of Photography. After returning to the United
States 1890, Stieglitz joined the Society of Amateur Photographers of
New York. These experiences would later help him in years to come.
By 1902 Stieglitz had become the authority in his chosen field.
Stieglitz found that his achievements were not enough to win
recognition for photography. Finally in 1902 he founded an entirely new
photography group of his own, the Photo Secession. The focus of the
Photo Secession was the advancement of pictorial photography. Stieglitz
being the leader gathered a talented group of American photographers
headed toward the same common goal, to demonstrate photography as an
art form( Lowe 54). This was the first of many Photo Secession shows
through which Stieglitz set out and demonstrated photography as an art.
Their first Photo Secession exhibition was held at the National Arts
Club in New York. Photo Secession shows were supported by galleries all
over the world as well as Stieglitz's own gallery. All these events
were reported in Stieglitz's weekly magazine Camera Work, which
Stieglitz founded, edited, and published in fifty volumes from its
beginning in 1903 until its end in 1917. Although the Photo Secession
group never dissolved, it gradually diminished as an organized group.
Stieglitz continued to show new photographic work when he believed it
was important. It was all part of his fight for photography, but the
battleground and the participants had changed.
In 1917 when Stieglitz was 54 years old Georgia O'Keeffe arrived in
New York (see pict.1). This event would change Stieglitz's life
forever. Stieglitz at first didn't know Georgia personally but showed
her pictures at his gallery "291". They would later meet during one of
Georgia's shows. Soon after they meet, Alfred took Georgia up to the
Stieglitz home at Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains. Soon
Stieglitz was one of Georgia's most eager supporters, arranging shows
even selling some of her paintings. Buying an O'Keffe was not only
expensive, but a collector needed to meet Stieglitz's standards for
owning one ( Doty 135). In 1925 she and Stieglitz moved into the
Shelton Hotel in New York, taking an apartment on the 30th floor of the
building. They would live there for 12 years. With a spectacular view,
Georgia would begin to paint the city while Stieglitz photographed New
York.
By 1928 Georgia began to feel the need to travel and find other
sources for painting. In May of 1929, Georgia would set out by train
with her friend Beck Strand to Taos, New Mexico, a trip that would
forever change her life (Lowe 100 ). Stieglitz would not accompany her.
He remained in New York City at his Lake George residence. In 1937
Stieglitz made his last new prints (see pict.2). Stieglitz would later
die at his Lake George home on July 13, 1946.
II. About Photography
The word photography is derived from the Greek words for light and
writing (Lowe 12). A camera is a complex piece of equipment used in
photography. A camera is made up of a complex number of parts - a box
carrying a lens, diaphragm, and shutter (see pict.3) that are arranged
to throw an image of the scene to be recorded onto a sensitive film or
plate (Peterson 54). Most people think of photography as snap and
shoot, go to the store and get it developed. However, there are many
other things that are going on to make that picture that is going into
your photo album. One of the three most important things that is needed
in making a picture is a camera lens. The lens is an image-forming
device on a camera. If an object is far away use a higher mm lens such
as 1000mm. If the object is closer use a smaller mm lens like 10 mm.
You also use the lens to focus in the object clearly. The closer the
object is, the smaller the focus is. The farther away the object is,
the bigger the focus is. The next important thing in making a picture
is the shutter speed. The shutter is the device on the camera acting as
a gate controlling the duration of time that light is allowed to pass
through the lens and fall on the film (Doty 76). Shutters help to take
pictures of things moving, without and shutter just about every thing
you take a picture of would be blurry making a pretty ugly picture. The
last important thing is the film. This determines what the picture's
color will look like. Oftentimes, a photographer uses black and white
film to show emotion, color to show movement. There are hundreds of
different kinds of film to show different feeling in each and every
photo taken by a camera. These and other factors make professional
photography a complex process.
III. What his art says.
Alfred Stieglitz's involvement in photography dated from 1883, the
year he purchased a camera and enrolled in a photochemistry course, to
the year he died in 1946. When Stieglitz returned to America from
England, he found that photography, as he understood it, hardly
existed. An instrument had been put on the market shortly before,
called Kodak. The slogan sent out to advertisers reading, "You press
the button and we'll do with the rest". This idea sickened Stieglitz.
To Stieglitz it seemed like rotten sportsmanship (Peterson 10).
Stieglitz wanted to make photography an art so Stieglitz decided, to do
something about it. Camera Notes (1897- 1903) was the most significant
American photographic journal of its time (see pict.4). Published
monthly by the Camera Club of New York and edited for most of its life
by Alfred Stieglitz, the journal embodied major changes for american
photography in general and to Stieglitz' s career in particular. Camera
Notes signaled the beginning of the movement of artistic photography in
the United States. Over the course of the six years that Camera Notes
was published, Stieglitz witnessed the establishment of an American
standard for artistic photography and the "dissolution of his faith in
members" of popular camera clubs. Camera Notes ushered in not only a
new century, but also an entirely different attitude toward photography
(Peterson 35). This journal represented a noble effort on the part of
Stieglitz to work within the territory of the American Camera Club
movement (Norman 67). The journal included a number of articles and
photographic illustrations he believed would inspire his readers to
higher levels of picture making and greater depths of artistic meaning
(Peterson 10). Later Stieglitz resigned from being the editor of Camera
Club because of others accused him of rule or run tactics. Stieglitz
then created his own magazine. Stieglitz had always dreamed of
publishing and editing his own independent magazine, Camera Work. In
choosing the title Stieglitz felt that he could form a growing belief
in any medium. After publishing Camera Work Stieglitz became widely
recognized as an international leader in the photographic world.
Stieglitz and others who were making photographs of the cultured
merit at the turn of the century generally termed their work pictorial
rather than artistic (Norman 45). Pictorial photography meant precisely
artistic photography in their minds, but the phrase was used in part
because it was less threatening to an established artist. Despite this
approach, pictorialists were intent upon making pictures with their
cameras, by which they meant images of pleasing value. The word
pictorial implied an association with pictures, a class of visual
phenomenon that was largely made up of fine paintings, prints and
drawings. Pictorialists worked with a narrow range of subjects, in part
because they wished to downplay the importance of the subject matter.
They would later flourish into painter photographers.
At the turn of the century, a new class of creative individuals,
called painter- photographer emerged. This group fulfilled Stieglitz' s
dream for pictorial photography. Its presence provided the movement
with individuals who were trained in the established arts and who
legitimized the artistic claims of pictorial photography by the fact
that they were willing to use the photographic medium. The very term
painter photographer was made up in reference to Frank Eugene who
worked simultaneously with Stieglitz in media for a decade. Eugene
attended a German fine arts academy, and painted theatrical portraits
of the United States. In 1889 he mounted a solo exhibition of pictorial
photographs at the Camera Club of New York, which, pointedly, was
reviewed in Camera Notes as painting photography (Norman 23).
In conclusion, Stieglitz's fight for photography developed into new
ideas for future generations. He continued to make his own experiments
and to defend the work of others also breaking new ground. The
magazines he edited, like the galleries he founded, swiftly became
dynamic points of contact between artist and public and a battleground
for new ideas.
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