Further Reading
Coke, Van Deren.Avant-Garde Photography in Germany,
1919–1939. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.
Daniel, Pete, Merry A. Foresta, Maren Stange, and Sally
Stein.Official Images: New Deal Photography. Washing-
ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1987.
Druckery, Timothy, ed.Electronic Culture: Technology and
Visual Representation. New York: Aperture, 1996.
Galassi, Peter.American Photography, 1890–1965. New York:
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Museum of Modern Art, 1995.
Grundberg, Andy, and Kathleen Gauss.Photography and
Art: Interactions Since 1946. New York: Abbeville Press,
1987.
Hambourg, Maria Morris, and Christopher Phillips.The
New Vision: Photography Between the World Wars: The
Ford Motor Company Collection at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989.
Homer, William Innes.Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Seces-
sion. Boston: A New York Graphic Society Book, Little,
Brown and Company, 1983.
Phillips, Christopher, ed.Photography in the Modern Era:
European Documents and Critical Writings, 1913–1940.
New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Aperture,
1989.
Sontag, Susan.On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus,
and Giroux, 1977.
Teitelbaum, Matthew, ed.Montage and Modern Life, 1919–
1942. Cambridge and London: MIT Press, and Boston:
The Institute of Contemporary Art, 1992.
Trachtenberg, Alan, and Lawrence W. Levine.Document-
ing America, 1935–1943. Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1988.
Williams, Val.Women Photographers: The Other Observers,
1900 to the Present. London: Virago Press Ltd., 1986.HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY:
TWENTIETH-CENTURY PIONEERS
Like traditional histories, the history of photography
has, until recently, been ‘‘heroic.’’ That is, it has
focused on the achievement of individuals. Even as
photohistory has become wider in its scope and has
become more interested in its social and cultural
dimensions, it is still important to single out those
pioneers whose work and interests embodied crucial
changes in twentieth-century photography. Those
discussed in this entry—mainly up to the 1980s—
introduced a new style, subject, or technique. They
may also have championed a new way of thinking
about the medium. Their importance can be mea-
sured by their influence on others and through their
exhibitions, publications, and awards.
Stylistic Pioneers
The most renowned photographers of the century
introduced new styles and subjects. In the first few
years of the twentieth century, Robert Demachy
(1859–1936) was an expert of the gum bichromate
and oil processes, important Pictorialist techni-
ques. He advocated heavy manipulation of the
negative, to make photos more artworthy, describ-
ing this aesthetic in books and magazines. Hugo
Henneberg (1863–1918), Heinrich Ku ̈hn (1866–
1944), and Hans Watzek (1848–1903) were leaders
of the Pictorialist movement in Austria and formed
a group known as the Trifolium. They produced
many pastoral, Impressionistic images. Clarence
White (1871–1925) was a key member of Alfred
Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession and an important tea-
cher of Pictorialist principles. His elegant images of
his turn-of-the-century family were influential. The
school that White established (in 1916) trained
many subsequent photographers.
Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) was a one-man pro-
paganda machine for artistic photography, and was
a leader in camera clubs and organizations in the
years around the turn of the century. He was the
nexus for a clique of artistic photographers, which he
called the Photo-Secession. He championed a new
style of photography in opposition to the prevailing
Pictorialist aesthetic. Called ‘‘straight,’’ it was more
crisp and eschewed any manipulation to the nega-
tive. He was also the publisher of a lavish photogra-
phy magazine,Camera Work, which established a
precedent for quality and aesthetics. He was proprie-
tor of the first and most important gallery of artistic
photography in America, the Little Galleries of the
Photo-Secession (later, simply 291 for its address on
Fifth Avenue, in New York). Finally, inasmuch asHISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TWENTIETH-CENTURY PIONEERS