Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz (; January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century, where he introduced many avant-garde European artists to the U.S. He was married to painter Georgia O'Keeffe.

Early life and education

thumb|upright|1886 self-portrait

Stieglitz was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, the first son of German Jewish immigrants Edward Stieglitz (1833–1909) and Hedwig Ann Werner (1845–1922). His father was a lieutenant in the Union Army and worked as a wool merchant. He had five siblings, Flora (1865–1890), twins Julius (1867–1937) and Leopold (1867–1956), Agnes (1869–1952) and Selma (1871–1957). Alfred Stieglitz, seeing the close relationship of the twins, wished he had a soul mate of his own during his childhood. The next year, Alfred Stieglitz studied mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. He enrolled in a chemistry class taught by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, a scientist and researcher, who worked on the chemical processes for developing photographs. In Vogel, Stieglitz found both the academic challenge he needed and an outlet for his growing artistic and cultural interests. He received an allowance of $1,200 () a year.

Early interest in photography

thumb|left|Alfred Stieglitz, The Last Joke, [[Bellagio, Lombardy|Bellagio, 1887]]

In 1884, his parents returned to America, but 20-year-old Stieglitz remained in Germany and collected books on photography and photographers in Europe and the U.S. He bought his first camera, an 8 × 10 plate film camera, and traveled through the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. He took photographs of landscapes and workers in the countryside. Photography, he later wrote, "fascinated me, first as a toy, then as a passion, then as an obsession."

Through his self-study, he saw photography as an art form. In 1887, he wrote his very first article, "A Word or Two about Amateur Photography in Germany", for the new magazine Amateur Photographer.

He won first place for his photograph The Last Joke, Bellagio from Amateur Photographer in 1887. The next year he won both first and second prizes in the same competition, and his reputation began to spread, as several German and British photographic magazines published his work.

In 1890, his sister Flora died while giving birth, and Stieglitz returned to New York.

Stieglitz turned the Camera Club's current newsletter into a magazine, Camera Notes, and was given full control over the new publication. Its first issue was published in July 1897. It was soon considered the finest photographic magazine in the world. Over the next four years Stieglitz used Camera Notes to champion his belief in photography as an art form by including articles on art and aesthetics next to prints by some of the leading American and European photographers. Critic Sadakichi Hartmann wrote "it seemed to me that artistic photography, the Camera Club and Alfred Stieglitz were only three names for one and the same thing."

He also continued to take his own photographs. Late in 1896, he hand-pulled the photogravures for a first portfolio of his own work, Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies. He continued to exhibit in shows in Europe and the U.S., and by 1898 he had gained a solid reputation as a photographer. He was paid $75 () for his favorite print, Winter – Fifth Avenue. who, unlike painters and other artists, knew about photography and its technical characteristics. In December 1901, he was invited by Charles DeKay of the National Arts Club to put together an exhibition in which Stieglitz would have "full power to follow his own inclinations." Within two months Stieglitz had assembled a collection of prints from a close circle of his friends, which, in homage to the Munich photographers, he called the Photo-Secession. Stieglitz was not only declaring a secession from the general artistic restrictions of the era, but specifically from the official oversight of the Camera Club.

He began formulating a plan to publish a completely independent magazine of pictorial photography to carry forth the artistic standards of the Photo-Secessionist. By July, he had fully resigned as editor of Camera Notes, and one month later he published a prospectus for a new journal he called Camera Work. He was determined it would be "the best and most sumptuous of photographic publications".

Stieglitz was a perfectionist, and it showed in every aspect of Camera Work. He advanced the art of photogravure printing by demanding unprecedentedly high standards for the prints in Camera Work. The visual quality of the gravures was so high that when a set of prints failed to arrive for a Photo-Secession exhibition in Brussels, a selection of gravures from the magazine was hung instead. Most viewers assumed they were looking at the original photographs. more than half of those sales of Steichen's work.

Two months later the 42-year-old Stieglitz met 28-year-old artist Pamela Colman Smith, who wished to have her drawings and watercolors shown at his gallery. He decided to show her work because he thought it would be "highly instructive to compare drawings and photographs in order to judge photography's possibilities and limitations".

Stieglitz deliberately interspersed exhibitions of what he knew would be controversial art, such as Rodin's sexually explicit drawings, with what Steichen called "understandable art", and with photographs. The intention was to "set up a dialogue that would enable 291 visitors to see, discuss and ponder the differences and similarities between artists of all ranks and types: between painters, draftsmen, sculptors and photographers; between European and American artists; between older or more established figures and younger, newer practitioners." During this same period the National Arts Club mounted a "Special Exhibition of Contemporary Art" that included photographs by Stieglitz, Steichen, Käsebier and White along with paintings by Mary Cassatt, William Glackens, Robert Henri, James McNeill Whistler and others. This is thought to have been the first major show in the U.S. in which photographers were given equal ranking with painters.

Stieglitz wrote to fellow photographer George Seeley "The reputation, not only of the Photo-Secession, but of photography is at stake, and I intend to muster all the forces available to win out for us." He mounted an exhibition of his own photographs at 291 to run at the same time as the Armory Show. He later wrote that allowing people to see both photographs and modern paintings at the same time "afforded the best opportunity to the student and public for a clearer understanding of the place and purpose of the two media."

thumb|left|[[Autochrome portrait of Stieglitz and his wife Emily, ca. 1915. While attributed to Stieglitz, image may well be the work of Edward Steichen or Frank Eugene.]]

In January 1916, suffragist Anita Pollitzer showed Stieglitz a set of charcoal drawings by Georgia O'Keeffe. Stieglitz was so taken by her art that without meeting O'Keeffe or even getting her permission to show her works he made plans to exhibit her work at 291. The first that O'Keeffe heard about any of this was from another friend who saw her drawings in the gallery in late May of that year. She finally met Stieglitz after going to 291 and chastising him for showing her work without her permission.

O'Keeffe and modern art (1918–1924)

thumb|A Stieglitz portrait of [[Georgia O'Keeffe (1918)]]

In early June 1918, O'Keeffe moved to New York from Texas after Stieglitz promised he would provide her with a quiet studio where she could paint. Within a month he took the first of many nude photographs of her at his family's apartment while his wife Emmy was away, but she returned while their session was still in progress. She had suspected something was going on between the two for a while, and told him to stop seeing her or get out.</blockquote>

In 1922, Stieglitz organized a large show of John Marin's paintings and etching at the Anderson Galleries, followed by a huge auction of nearly two hundred paintings by more than forty American artists, including O'Keeffe. Energized by this activity, he began one of his most creative and unusual undertakings – photographing a series of cloud studies simply for their form and beauty. He said:

<blockquote>I wanted to photograph clouds to find out what I had learned in forty years about photography. Through clouds to put down my philosophy of life – to show that (the success of) my photographs (was) not due to subject matter – not to special trees or faces, or interiors, to special privileges – clouds were there for everyone…</blockquote>

Stieglitz's mother Hedwig died in November 1922, and as he did with his father he buried his grief in his work. He spent time with Paul Strand and wife, painter Rebecca Salsbury, reviewed the work of another newcomer named Edward Weston and began organizing a new show of O'Keeffe's work. Her show opened in early 1923, and Stieglitz spent much of the spring marketing her work. Eventually twenty of her paintings sold for more than $3,000. In the summer, O'Keeffe once again took off for the seclusion of the Southwest, and for a while Stieglitz was alone with Salsbury at Lake George. He took a series of nude photos of her, and soon he became infatuated with her. They had a brief physical affair before O'Keeffe returned in the fall. O'Keeffe could tell what had happened, but since she did not see Stieglitz's new lover as a serious threat to their relationship she let things pass. Six years later she would have her own affair with Salsbury in New Mexico.

In 1924, Stieglitz's divorce was finally approved by a judge, and within four months he and O'Keeffe married in a small, private ceremony at Marin's house. They went home without a reception or honeymoon. O'Keeffe said later that they married in order to help soothe the troubles of Stieglitz's daughter Kitty, who at that time was being treated in a sanatorium for depression and hallucinations.

At the end of 1924, Stieglitz donated 27 photographs to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It was the first time a major museum included photographs in its permanent collection. In the same year he was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's Progress Medal for advancing photography and received an Honorary Fellowship of the Society.

The Intimate Gallery and An American Place (1925–1937)

In 1925, Stieglitz was invited by the Anderson Galleries to put together one of the largest exhibitions of American art, entitled Alfred Stieglitz Presents Seven Americans: 159 Paintings, Photographs, and Things, Recent and Never Before Publicly Shown by Arthur G. Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Charles Demuth, Paul Strand, Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Only one small painting by O'Keeffe was sold during the three-week exhibit. He also put on one of the first shows of Eliot Porter's work two years later. Stieglitz, considered the "godfather of modern photography", encouraged Todd Webb to develop his own style and immerse himself in the medium.

Last years (1938–1946)

In the summer of 1946, Stieglitz suffered a fatal stroke and went into a coma. O'Keeffe returned to New York and found Dorothy Norman in his hospital room. Norman left and O'Keeffe was with him when he died.

In 2019, the National Gallery published an updated, Online Edition of the Alfred Stieglitz Key Set.

Legacy

Stieglitz explained in 1934:

:"Personally I like my photography straight, unmanipulated, devoid of all tricks; a print not looking like anything but a photograph, living through its own inherent qualities and revealing its own spirit."

"Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) is perhaps the most important figure in the history of visual arts in America. That is certainly not to say that he was the greatest artist America has ever produced. Rather, through his many roles – as a photographer, as a discoverer and promoter of photographers and of artists in other media, and as a publisher, patron, and collector – he had a greater impact on American art than any other person has had."
"Alfred Stieglitz had the multifold abilities of a Renaissance man. A visionary of enormously wide perspective, his accomplishments were remarkable, his dedication awe-inspiring. A photographer of genius, a publisher of inspiration, a writer of great ability, a gallery owner and exhibition organizer of both photographic and modern art exhibitions, a catalyst and a charismatic leader in the photographic and art worlds for over thirty years, he was, necessarily, a passionate, complex, driven and highly contradictory character, both prophet and martyr. The ultimate maverick, he inspired great love and great hatred in equal measure."
A large number of his works are held at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
In 1971 Stieglitz was posthumously inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum.
In 2012, the IAU named a crater on the planet Mercury after Stieglitz.

Gallery

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References

External links

George Eastman House: Alfred Stieglitz Collection
Alfred Stieglitz at the Art Institute of Chicago
PBS website on Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O'Keeffe Archive at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
The Art of the Photogravure: Key Figures
The two most costly Stieglitz photos, 2006
Katherine Hoffman, "Alfred Stieglitz: A Legacy of Light",(Yale University Press, 2011),
Autochromes by Alfred Stieglitz from Mark Jacobs Collection
Autochromes by Alfred Stieglitz from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Guide to the Stieglitz-Mathieu Correspondence 1943–1945 at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand 2010 exhibition the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe 2011 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Alfred Stieglitz and His Circle a 2016-2017 exhibit at the National Gallery of Art
Alfred Stieglitz and John Marin 2018 exhibit at the National Gallery of Art