graphs of urban, mechanical, architectural geome-
tries. Weston’s style of modernism, however, relied
on the large-format camera, but with the negatives
precisely exposed so that the need for darkroom
manipulation was limited and quickly became a sort
of classicism of freezing beautiful, awe-inspiring
images in lush blacks and whites, mimicked by a
large contingency of west-coast based photographers
including Ruth Bernard and Ansel Adams.
But as much as Stieglitz secured photography’s
place in modernism, he limited its meaning and
scope, particularly in terms of its political engage-
ment. In Reading American Photographs (1989)
Alan Trachtenberg argues that Stieglitz’s defini-
tions of modern photography occluded and nar-
rowly defined Lewis Hine’s ‘‘radically reformative
achievement’’—his portrayals of the workers,
immigrants, and children forced to the impover-
ished edge of New York’s industrial economy
around the turn of the twentieth century. However,
the two poles that Stieglitz’s and Hine’s work
represents—portraying the aesthetics of repetition,
perception, and abstraction and critiquing capital-
ism’s effects—were unpredictably debated and
synthesized in postmodern photographic practice.
KimberlyLammSeealso:Bernhard, Ruth; Brassaı ̈; Dada; Decon-
struction; Futurism; Henri, Florence; Hine, Lewis;
History of Photography: Interwar Years; History of
Photography: Twentieth-Century Developments; His-
tory of Photography: Twentieth-Century Pioneers;
Ka ̈sebier, Gertrude; Krauss, Rosalind; Langdon
Coburn, Alfred; Man Ray; Moholy-Nagy, La ́szlo ́;
Montage; Photogram; Photo-Secession; Pictorialism;
Steichen, Edward; Stieglitz, Alfred; Strand, Paul;
Surrealism; Weston, Edward; White, Clarence
Further Reading
Benjamin, Walter. ‘‘Uber den Begriff der Geschichte.’’
1931, inIlluminationen: Ausgewa ̈hlte Schriften 1. Frank-
furt am Main: Verlag, 1977; as ‘‘A Short History of
Photography.’’ Trans. Phil Patton.Classic Essays on
Photography. Ed. Alan Trachtenberg. New Haven, CT:
Leete’s Island Books, 1980: 203.
———. ‘‘Das Kuntswerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen
Reproduzierbarkeit.’’ 1936, Zeitschrift fu ̈rSozial-
forschung, V. 1; As ‘‘The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction.’’Illuminations. Ed. Hannah
Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schoken
Books, 1968.
Crow, Thomas. ‘‘Modernism and Mass Culture in the Visual
Arts.’’ In Modernism and Modernity. Ed. Benjamin
Buchloch, Serge Guilbaut, and David Solkin. Halifax:
The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Press, 1983.
Krauss, Rosalind. ‘‘The Photographic Conditions of Surre-
alism.’’October19 (Winter 1981).
———. ‘‘Notes on the Index Part 1.’’October3 (Spring
1977).
Owens, Craig. ‘‘Photography en abyme.’’October5 (Sum-
mer 1978).
Phillips, Christopher, ed.Photography in the Modern Era:
European Documents and Critical Writings, 1913–1940.
New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Aperture,
1989: ix.
Rodchenko, Alexandr. ‘‘Puti sovremennoi fotografi.’’
Novyi lefno. 9 (1928); As ‘‘The Paths of Modern Photo-
graphy.’’ Trans. John E. Bowlt, inPhotography in the
Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings,
1913–1940. Ed. Christopher Phillips. New York: Metro-
politan Museum of Art and Aperture, 1989: 257.
Sekula, Allan. ‘‘On the Invention of Photographic Mean-
ing.’’ InPhotography Against the Grain: Essays and
Photo Works, 1973–1983. Ed. Sekula. Halifax: The
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Press, 1984.
Solomon-Godeau, Abigail. Photography at the Dock:
Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Prac-
tices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.
Trachtenberg, Alan. Reading American Photographs:
Images as History Matthew Brady to Walker Evans.
New York: Hill and Wang, 1989: 165.Alexandr Rodchenko, At the Telephone Na telefone, From
a series on the production of a newspaper, 1928, Gelatin-
silver print, 15½11½^00 , Mr. and Mrs. John Spencer
Fund.
[Digital Image#The Museum of Modern Art/Licenced by
SCALA/Art Resource, NY Photo#Estate of Alexander
Rodchenko/RAO, Moscow/VAGA, New York]MODERNISM