PHOTO-SECESSIONISTS
Around 1900 a group of photographers in Europe
and the United States was beginning to rebel
against traditional photography and nineteenth
century photographic associations. These photo-
graphers wished to make photographs that would
be valued not only for their subject matter but also
for the manner in which they were made, that is,
photographs realized with consummate mastery of
the medium’s unique technical and formal qualities
and expressed with artistry. These ideals came to be
associated most closely with and expressed by the
Photo-Secession group, organized in 1902 by Alfred
Stieglitz who at that time was already known inter-
nationally, along with 12 other photographers.
The Photo-Secession was a major turning point
in photography. While the term refers to a specific
organization of like-minded photographers, it also
marked a significant conceptual and aesthetic ad-
vance in photography’s status within society. The
main goal of the group was to gain recognition for
photography as a legitimate fine-arts medium.
Photographers had been attempting this recogni-
tion since the early days of the medium, however,
this need was made greater by the new class of
amateurs bearing Kodaks, who had little or no
technical knowledge in photography, that emerged
after the introduction of inexpensive, easy-to-use
cameras around the turn of the century.
The Photo-Secession was founded on February
17, 1902, in New York by John G. Bullock, Robert
S. Redfield, and Edmund Stirling of Pennsylvania;
William B. Dyer and Eva Watson-Schu ̈tze of Illi-
nois; Frank Eugene, Dallett Fuguet, Gertrude
Ka ̈sebier, Joseph T. Keiley, Edward Steichen,
Alfred Stieglitz, and John Francis Strauss of New
York; and Clarence H. White of Ohio.
As printed in an early brochure, the objectives of
the Photo-Secession were threefold:
to advance photography as applied to pictorial expression;
draw together those Americans practicing or otherwise
interested in the art; and to hold from time to time, at
varying places, exhibitions not necessarily limited to the
productions of the Photo-Secessionists or to American work.
The Secession’s governing structure was as follows:
A Council, composed of a Director and twelve others, to
whom is absolutely committed the management of theaffairs of the organization. The Council until 1905 shall
consist of the Founders of the organization. Thereafter
the Council shall consist of the Founders and five addi-
tional Fellows elected biennially by the Fellows; Fel-
lows, chosen by the Council and Associates
whose role was not clearly defined but who could
submit work to the juried exhibitions.
The membership quickly grew, eventually reach-
ing to up to a hundred. Many of the members of
the Photo-Secession were also members of the
Camera Club of New York, (Stieglitz served as its
Vice-President) but there was no official relation-
ship between the two organizations.
Alfred Stieglitz was the major figure of this
group and a leading influence in photography
since the first decade of the twentieth century. He
founded the Photo-Secession with the idea of link-
ing photographers with a common ideal about
what art photography should be, following the
ideals of the Linked Ring Brotherhood that had
been formed in London in 1892. As well, the name
of the group was taken from the various European
Secessionist painters who had rebelled against aca-
demic painting, primarily the Vienna Secession
founded in Austria in 1897. The Vienna Secession’s
model of an exhibition space and journal to disse-
minate the group’s ideals was successfully adopted
by Stieglitz. Another influence was that of the
Symbolist painting movement, which sought to
infuse art with larger philosophical ideals, remov-
ing it from the realm of the natural and sentimental
into the spheres of mythology and psychology.
The Photo-Secession was the first school in the
sense of a group with shared goals, ideas, and some
commonality in style, in photography’s history. The
magazineCamera Work, directed by Stieglitz, was
the major instrument promoting Photo-Secessio-
nists’ ideas and work. The Photo-Secession’s ideals
had a significant influence in many European coun-
tries, especially in France, Austria, and Great Brit-
ain. Various groups and associations were active in
promoting this new photographic idea and style,
often referred to as Pictorialism, which had adapted
the look of paintings and graphics to align photo-
graphy with its fellow-fine arts mediums. Along with
the Linked Ring in Britain, the Wiener Kamera
Klub, Austria (founded 1891) and the Photo-ClubPHOTO-SECESSIONISTS