torial photography paled in light of what he was
learning about European modernist art under the
tutelage of Steichen and Max Weber. Stieglitz
began to think in terms of summing up the history
and achievements of pictorialism. Toward that end
Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession organized a large
exhibition, the ‘‘International Exhibition of Pictor-
ial Photography,’’ at the Albright Art Gallery in
Buffalo, New York, in late 1910. In addition to
photographs by members of the Photo-Secession,
Stieglitz exhibited prints made by Alvin Langdon
Coburn from the negatives of early Scottish photo-
graphers David Octavius Hill and Robert Adam-
son, prints by Julia Margaret Cameron, and by
leading European photographers such as Robert
Demachy and Heinrich Ku ̈hn. In a concession to
other pictorial photographers who were not mem-
bers of the Photo-Secession, a jury-selected Open
Section was also included.
The Albright Gallery exhibition was the last
large-scale exhibition of Photo-Secession photo-
graphs organized by Stieglitz. In it he presented a
summary view of pictorial photography, establish-
ing a history of its practice and legitimizing the
work done by Photo-Secessionists. With the accep-
tance of photography by the Albright Art Gallery
the Photo-Secession could claim that its goal of
achieving the recognition of photography as a fine
art had been attained.
Conclusion
The formation of the Photo-Secession in 1902 sug-
gested a separation of that group’s members from
the community of pictorial photographers. Yet
Stieglitz and the other Photo-Secessionists could
no more separate themselves from the community
than they could give up photography. They were
inextricably a part of the photographic community,
and their stance makes sense only within the con-
text of that community. Rather than a separation,
the Photo-Secession was instead a declaration that
its members would no longer allow others to make
decisions about how their work should be seen,
either in the material context of an exhibition, on
the printed page, or in relationship to other arts.
While the organization gave its members credibility
within the larger arts community, the Photo-Seces-
sion also gave Stieglitz and its members the free-
dom to promote a view of photography that
ultimately emplaced the medium within the institu-
tions of fine art.
LeonE. ZimlichSeealso: Coburn, Alvin Langdon; History of
Photography: Nineteenth-Century Foundations;
History of Photography: Twentieth-Century Devel-
opments; Ka ̈sebier, Gertrude; Linked Ring; Period-
icals: Historical; Photo-Secessionists; Pictorialism;
Steichen, Edward; Stieglitz, Alfred; Strand, Paul;
White, ClarenceFurther Reading
Doty, Robert.Photo-Secession: Photography as a Fine Art.
Rochester, NY: George Eastman House, 1960; asPhoto-
Secession: Stieglitz and the Fine-Art Movement in Photo-
graphy. New York: Dover Publications, 1978.
Green, Jonathan, ed.Camera Work: A Critical Anthology.
New York: Aperture, 1973.
Greenough, Sarah, et. al.Modern Art and America: Alfred
Stieglitz and His New York Galleries. Washington, DC:
National Gallery of Art, and Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 2001.
Homer, William Innes.Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Seces-
sion. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, New York
Graphic Society, 1983.
Home, William Innes, and Catherine Johnson, eds.Stieglitz
and the Photo Secession, 1902. London: Penguin Studio
Books, 2002.
Lowe, Sue Davidson.Stieglitz: A Memoir/Biography. New
York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983.
Naef, Weston J.The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz: Fifty
Pioneers of Modern Photography. New York: Metropo-
litan Museum of Art, Viking Press, 1978.
Peterson, Christian A.Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Notes.
Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and
New York: W.W. Norton, 1993.
Whelan, Richard.Alfred Stieglitz: A Biography. Boston:
Little, Brown, 1995.PHOTO-SECESSION