ALFRED STIEGLITZ
American
Alfred Stieglitz is one of the key figures in pho-
tography of the twentieth century and the develop-
ment of Modern art in America. A man who wore
several hats—photographer, editor, gallery owner,
essayist—he devoted himself to all these activities
with the same passion and success. Stieglitz was a
key figure in the dissemination of ideas that arose
in both the French and American avant-gardes of
the turn of the nineteenth century, beginning with
Pictorialism. He was the most famous American
Pictorialist, leading a movement that contributed
greatly to the development of photography and its
acceptance as art. He also was the key figure who
turned away from Pictorialism as it became
exhausted in the late teens, accepting the revolu-
tionary Modern ideas flowing from Europe in the
1920s both as an artist and impresario.
Alfred Stieglitz was born in Hoboken, New Jer-
sey in 1864. He was the oldest of six children in a
German-Jewish family of comfortable means and
attended schools in New York. In 1881, he was sent
abroad to complete his education, and he started a
training course in Berlin in order to become an
engineer. After taking a photochemistry course
taught by the eminent scientist Wilhelm Vogel in
1883, Stieglitz became fascinated by photography.
At the age of 19, he took his first pictures. In 1887,
he received a prize, his first of hundreds, for the
photographA Good Jake, taken from his series
about Italian farmers. At that time, Stieglitz was
taking part in numerous competitions and penned
many articles about photography.
After nearly 10 years in Europe, Stieglitz re-
turned to New York in 1890 to become a partner
in the Photochrome Engraving Company. He was
admitted to the Society for Amateur Photogra-
phers and soon was writing articles for their pub-
lication.Cosmopolitanmagazine devoted an article
to his work as early as 1891. He was becoming
famous and adopted a nature commensurate with
his role as a leading artist and intellectual. His
marriage to Emmeline Obermeyer in 1894 provided
him a sufficient income to devote himself full time
to his artistic projects, which included increasing
involvement in Pictorialism, the leading photo-
graphic aesthetic of the day. This same year, he
was elected to membership in the prestigious En-
glish club of pictorialists, the Linked Ring.
In 1896, Stieglitz was instrumental in the creation
of the Camera Club of New York out of the Society
for Amateur Photographer, serving as editor of their
magazineCamera Notes. This well-produced maga-
zine (George H. Seeley, Edward Steichen, and Clar-
ence White were all involved) was seminal in
disseminating photography to a larger public with
its luxurious photoengravings supervised by Stieglitz
himself. At this time, Stieglitz also published portfo-
lios likePicturesque Bits of New York(1897).
In 1899, Stieglitz’s work was featured in his first
monographic exhibition at the New York Camera
Club. This increasing notoriety drew around him
the leading amateur and professional photogra-
phers of the day, and in 1902 Stieglitz spearheaded
the Photo-Secession named and modeled after
avant-garde groups that had formed earlier in
Vienna and Munich. In 1903, the first issue of the
Secession’s organ,Camera Work, was published.
This prestigious magazine produced 50 issues over
14 years of publication.
In 1905, Stieglitz opened a gallery at 291 Fifth
Avenue that became known as the Little Galleries
of Photo-Secession or Gallery 291. As early as 1907,
with his colleague Steichen, who at that time was
living in European and serving as Stieglitz’s agent on
the continent, Stieglitz arranged exhibitions of the
future great names of modern painting and sculp-
ture, including Henri Matisse, Francis Picabia,
Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, and Auguste
Rodin. He also showed African sculpture in an exhi-
bition entitledThe Picasso-Braque-African Carving
Exhibition at 291in 1915.
Stieglitz also continued his photographic career.
Although the ideal of the Photo-Secession was to
create a new photographic language wherein
photography would be received as a fine art equal
to painting and sculpture, the Pictorialists sought
this equality through mimicking painting. Photo-
graphic images were highly manipulated, both on
the glass plate negatives and when printed out,
mostly as gum-bichromate prints. Stieglitz, how-
ever, began to develop his own form of pictorial-
ism, eventually rejecting retouching and otherSTIEGLITZ, ALFRED