Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), American photographer, editor, and art gallery director, was a leader in the battle to win recognition for photography as an art.

Alfred Stieglitz was born in Hoboken, N.J., on Jan. 1, 1864. In 1871 the family moved to New York City, where Stieglitz attended elementary schools and the College of the City of New York until 1881. He then studied at the Realgymnasium in Karlsruhe, Germany, and the Berlin Polytechnic Institute. He enrolled in the photographic courses of Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, an outstanding photographic scientist. As a student, he traveled extensively throughout Europe and, beginning in 1886, sent photographs to competitions. By 1890, when he returned to America, he was already famous.

In the United States, Stieglitz continued to photograph, using the newly invented hand camera and surprising his contemporaries with such a technical tour de force as "Winter on Fifth Avenue," taken in 1893 during a blizzard. He organized competitions and exhibitions in camera clubs and from 1890 to 1895 was in the photoengraving business. He was editor of the American Amateur Photographer (1893-1896), Camera Notes (1897-1902), which was the official organ of the Camera Club of New York, and Camera Works (1902-1917).

When the National Arts Club of New York invited Stieglitz to hold an exhibition in 1902, he showed the work of those American photographers in whom he believed. He described the exhibition as the work of the Photo-Secession. Thus an informal society was formed that dominated art photography in America for 15 years. His chief colleague was a young photographer and painter, Edward Steichen, who assisted him in the society's Little Galleries, which came to be known as "291" from the Fifth Avenue address.

In 1907 Stieglitz began to show works of art other than photography at "291." In 1908 he exhibited drawings by the sculptor Auguste Rodin and drawings, lithographs, etchings, and watercolors by Henri Matisse—the first American exhibition of this modern artist. "291" became the most progressive art gallery in the country, showing the work of Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and young Americans such as John Marin.

In 1910 Stieglitz organized a vast exhibition of pictorial photography in Buffalo, N.Y. He helped the Association of American Painters and Sculptors to organize the "International Exhibition of Modern Art" in 1913. During the exhibition he showed his own photographs at "291" as a demonstration of the esthetic differences between photography and other visual media.

The "Photo Secession" disbanded in 1917, "291" closed, and Camera Workceased publication, but Stieglitz continued to photograph and exhibit. He made penetrating portraits of his friends and associates. In answer to a challenge that his photographs' power was due to his hypnotic influence over his sitters, Stieglitz began to photograph clouds, to show, as he wrote in 1923, "that my photographs were not due to subject matter." He called these photographs "Equivalents," and they almost rivaled abstract art in their beauty of form and chiaroscuro.

In 1929 Stieglitz opened An American Place, a gallery where he showed paintings by contemporary Americans and, later, photographs. From the windows of this 17th-floor gallery and from his apartment he photographed New York City. He died on July 13, 1946.

Further Reading

Dorothy Norman, Alfred Stieglitz: Introduction to an American Seer (1960), whose text consists mainly of Stieglitz's recollections as told to the author, is handsomely illustrated; the detailed chronology is invaluable. Doris Bry, Alfred Stieglitz, Photographer (1965), reproduces, in original size, 62 photographs in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the text is concerned with Stieglitz's photographic activity. America and Alfred Stieglitz: A Collective Portrait, edited by Waldo Frank and others (1934), contains many brilliant essays which illuminate Stieglitz's philosophy and the breadth of his concern for the arts in America. Herbert J. Seligmann, Alfred Stieglitz Talking (1966), is a vivid journal of the author's visits with Stieglitz from 1925 to 1931.

Additional Sources

Eisler, Benita, O'Keeffe and Stieglitz: an American romance, New York: Doubleday, 1991.

Kim, Yong-gwon, Alfred Stieglitz and his time: an intellectual portrait, Seoul, Korea: American Studies Institute, Seoul National University, 1978.

Lowe, Sue Davidson, Stieglitz: a memoir/biography, New York:Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983.

Norman, Dorothy, Alfred Stieglitz: an American seer, New York:Aperture, 1990.

Whelan, Richard, Alfred Stieglitz: a biography, Boston: Little, Brown, 1995. □

Stieglitz, Alfred (1864–1946). American photographer, editor, writer, publisher, and art dealer who during the first two decades of the 20th century did more than anyone else to bring European avant-garde art before the American public. He was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, the son of a successful German immigrant businessman, and in 1881 was sent to Berlin to study mechanical engineering. While he was there he developed an interest in photography and by the time he returned to the USA in 1890 he already had an international reputation. In 1905, with another eminent photographer, Edward Steichen (1879–1973), he opened the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, which later became known as 291 Gallery (from its address at 291 Fifth Avenue, New York). It soon branched out from photography, and Stieglitz devoted much of his energy to promoting modernist painting and sculpture; the gallery presented the first American exhibitions of Matisse (1908), Toulouse-Lautrec (1909), Rousseau (1910), Picabia (1913), Severini (1917), and the first one-man exhibition of Brancusi anywhere (1914). It also gave the first exhibition of children's art and the first major exhibition of African art in America. Stieglitz also championed American artists, among them Georgia O'Keeffe, whom he married in 1924.

From 1903 to 1917 Stieglitz edited the journal Camera Work, which he published from the 291 Gallery. At first devoted exclusively to photography, it was later extended to cover all the visual arts and opened its pages to avant-garde American writers. He also published a short-lived Dadaist magazine called 291 (1915–16). The 291 Gallery was closed in 1917 when the building was pulled down, but Stieglitz continued his work with the Intimate Gallery (1925–9) and An American Place (1929–46). In spite of all his other activities, Stieglitz found time for his own photography and he is regarded as one of the most important figures of the history of the medium, playing a large part in establishing it as an independent art form: ‘From 1902 until the time of his death, Stieglitz was the very centre of photographical activity in the United States. He taught, he lectured, he wrote; his influence was incalculable’ ( Cecil Beaton and Gail Buckland, The Magic Image, 1975). His subjects included landscapes, views of New York, and studies of Georgia O'Keeffe, whom he lovingly depicted hundreds of times, often concentrating on details such as her hands or her torso. He rejected retouching and other forms of manipulation, believing that vision was more important than technique, although he insisted on using the best materials. His collection of art and photographs has been distributed to various collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

Alfred Stieglitz , 1864–1946, American photographer, editor, and art exhibitor, b. Hoboken, N.J. The first art photographer in the United States, Stieglitz more than any other American compelled the recognition of photography as a fine art. In 1881 he went to Berlin to study engineering but soon devoted himself to photography. In 1890 he returned to the United States and for three years helped to direct the Heliochrome Engraving Company. He then edited a series of photography magazines, the American Amateur Photographer (1892–96), Camera Notes (1897–1902), and Camera Work (1902–17), the organ of the photo-secessionists, a group he led that was dedicated to the promotion of photography as a legitimate art form.

In 1905 he established the famous gallery "291" at 291 Fifth Ave., New York City, for the exhibition of photography as a fine art. Soon the gallery broadened its scope to include the works of the modern French art movement and introduced to the United States the work of Cézanne , Picasso , Braque , Brancusi , and many others. It also made known the work of such American artists as John Marin , Charles Demuth , Max Weber , and Georgia O'Keeffe whom Stieglitz married in 1924.

From 1917 to 1925 Stieglitz produced his major works: the extraordinary portraits of O'Keeffe, studies of New York, and the great cloud series through which he developed his concept of photographic "equivalents." This concept greatly influenced photographic aesthetics. He then opened the Intimate Gallery (1925–30) and An American Place (1930–46), which continued the work of "291." Through his own superb photographic work and his generous championship of others, he promoted the symbolic and spiritually significant in American art, as opposed to the merely technically proficient.

Bibliography: See W. Frank et al., ed., America and Alfred Stieglitz (1934); S. Greenough, ed., My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz (1 vol., 2011–); biographies by D. Bry (1965), D. Norman (1973), S. D. Lowe (1983), R. Whelan (1995), and K. Hoffman (2 vol., 2004–11); W. I. Homer, Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession (1983); S. Greenough, Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set (2002).

Stieglitz, Alfred (1864–1946), photographer.An uncompromising figure in American photography, Alfred Stieglitz was essential to the import of European modernist ideas and the art that contained them, and the nurturing of American modernism in painting, photography, literature, criticism, and culture more broadly. Raised in a prosperous mercantile family in New York City, Stieglitz left for Berlin in 1882 to study engineering. There he met the German scientist‐photographer Hermann W. Vogel, who introduced him to photography within a context of high artistic standards and rigorous technical discipline.

Returning to the United States in 1890, Stieglitz sought to launch an artistic photography movement resembling those he had seen among devoted amateurs in Europe. His increasingly rigorous and solitary understanding of the medium and its possibilities, as well as his continuing connections to modernist Europe, found expression in his founding of the journal Camera Work in 1903 and the “Little Galleries of the Photosecession” in New York, made legendary by its address, “291.” In these venues he championed both European and American varieties of modernism. At the same time, his own increasingly spare and demanding photography culminated in work that used realist subjects to make images of high abstraction, most notably his Equivalents series, made beginning in the 1920s, using clouds as his sources. Involved with the painter Georgia O'Keeffe, whom he married in 1924, and a champion of the American modernists John Marin, Marsden Hartley, Paul Strand, and others, Stieglitz figured prominently in American modernist circles until his death.
See also Greenwich Village; Modernist Culture; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

Jonathan Green , Camera Work: A Critical Anthology, 1973.
Sarah Greenough and and Juan Hamilton , Alfred Stieglitz, 1983.
Richard Whelan , Alfred Stieglitz: A Biography, 1995.

Peter Bacon Hales

Stieglitz, Alfred (b Hoboken, NJ, 1 Jan. 1864; d New York, 13 July 1946). American photographer, editor, and art dealer who, during the first two decades of the 20th century, did more than anyone else to bring European avant-garde art before the American public. The son of a German immigrant, he spent most of the 1880s in Berlin and returned to the USA in 1890 with an international reputation as a photographer. His 291 Gallery (at 291 Fifth Avenue, New York), which he opened in 1905, presented the first American exhibitions of Matisse (1908), Toulouse-Lautrec (1909), the Douanier Rousseau (1910), Picabia (1913), and Severini (1917), and the first one-man exhibition of Brancusi anywhere (1914). It also gave the first exhibition of children's art and the first major exhibition of African art in America. Stieglitz also championed American artists, among them Georgia O'Keeffe, whom he married in 1924. From 1903 to 1917 he edited the journal Camera Work, which he published from the 291 Gallery. At first devoted to photography, it was later extended to cover all the visual arts and opened its pages to avant-garde American writers. The 291 Gallery was closed in 1917 when the building was pulled down, but Stieglitz continued his work with the Intimate Gallery (1925–9) and An American Place (1929–46). In his own medium of photography, he was a brilliant innovative artist. Learning from the avant-garde paintings that he exhibited, he experimented with various modes of abstraction and his work went a long way to revolutionize the concept of the photographic image and to establish photography as an independent art form. He formed an impressive collection of art, much of which was donated to the Art Institute of Chicago.

Stieglitz, Alfred (1864–1946). American photographer, editor, and art dealer who during the first two decades of the 20th century did more than anyone else to bring European avant-garde art before the American public. The son of a German immigrant, he spent most of the 1880s in Berlin and returned to the USA in 1890 with an international reputation as a photographer. His 291 Gallery (at 291 Fifth Avenue, New York), which he opened in 1905, presented the first American exhibitions of Matisse (1908), Toulouse-Lautrec (1909), Henri Rousseau (1910), Picabia (1913), and Severini (1917), and the first one-man exhibition of Brancusi anywhere (1914). It also gave the first exhibition of children's art and the first major exhibition of African art in America. Stieglitz also championed American artists, among them Georgia O'Keeffe, whom he married in 1924. From 1903 to 1917 he edited the journal Camera Work, which he published from the 291 Gallery. At first devoted to photography, it was later extended to cover all the visual arts and opened its pages to avant-garde American writers. The 291 Gallery was closed in 1917 when the building was pulled down, but Stieglitz continued his work with the Intimate Gallery (1925–9) and An American Place (1929–46). In his own medium of photography, Stieglitz was a brilliant innovative artist. Learning from the avant-garde paintings that he exhibited, he experimented with various modes of abstraction and his work went a long way to revolutionize the concept of the photographic image and to establish photography as an independent art form. He formed an impressive collection of art, much of which was donated to the Art Institute of Chicago.

Stieglitz, Alfred (1864–1946) US photographer, editor, and promoter of modern art. In 1902, Stieglitz founded the Photo-Secession Group. His photographs include classic portraits of his wife, Georgia O'Keeffe, studies of Manhattan, and the cloud images known as ‘equivalents’.