Contribution of Alfred Stieglitz to Photography as an Art Formn
Alfred Stieglitz – pioneer of modern photography
Alfred Stieglitz (1864 – 1946) was an advocate for the Modernist movement in the arts, and, arguably, the most important photographer of his fourth dimension. A photographer, publisher, writer and gallery owner, he played a key function in the promotion and exploration of photography equally an fine art class.
"Photography fascinated me, first as a toy, so as a passion, then as an obsession."
Alfred Stieglitz
Stieglitz was a pupil in Frg when he bought his first photographic camera, an 8 × 10 plate film camera that required a tripod. Despite its bulk, Stieglitz travelled throughout Europe, taking photographs of landscapes and labourers in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. In 1892, Stieglitz bought his kickoff manus-held camera, a Folmer and Schwing four × 5 plate movie camera, which he used to accept ii of his all-time known images, Winter, Fifth Avenue and The Terminal.
Stieglitz collected books on photography and photographers in Europe and the US and wrote manufactures on the technical and aesthetic aspects of photography. Through his cocky-study, Stieglitz developed and refined his vision of photography every bit an fine art course.
Photo-Secession and Camera Work
In 1902, Stieglitz founded Photo-Secession, a radical and controversial movement that was influential in promoting photography every bit a art. For this group, photography was viewed not only as a documenting tool, but as a new way of expression and creation, whereby an prototype could be manipulated to achieve a subjective vision.
The ideas of Photo-Secession, and the establishment of photography as a fine fine art, were promoted through Stieglitz's Photographic camera Piece of work, a quarterly photographic journal published from 1903 to 1917. The beginning issue was printed in Dec 1902, and similar all of the subsequent issues it contained beautiful hand-pulled photogravures (a process that uses gelatin to transfer the image from a black and white negative to a copper printing plate), critical writings on photography, and commentaries on photographers and exhibitions.
In the introduction to the offset issue, Stieglitz wrote:
"Only examples of such works as gives bear witness of individuality and creative worth, regardless of schoolhouse, or contains some infrequent characteristic of technical merit, or such equally exemplifies some handling worthy of consideration, will find recognition in these pages. Nevertheless, the Pictorial will be the dominating feature of the mag."
In 1905 Stieglitz opened the "fiddling galleries of the Photograph-Secession" in New York at 291 Fifth Avenue, which later became known as gallery '291'. The effect of the Commencement Earth War and the changes in the New York arts scene meant that in 1917 Stieglitz could no longer beget to publish Camera Piece of work or to run the gallery.
Influenced past the large abstract drawings of the American artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 – 1986) and the piece of work of American photographer Paul Strand (1890 – 1976), Stieglitz adopted an arguably more Modernist approach in the 1920s and 1930s. He started to make small gelatin-silverish prints of exquisite precision and sharp tonal contrast and to explore the creative and spiritual potential of his everyday environs.
Betwixt 1925 and 1934, Stieglitz took a serial of photographs of clouds. The Equivalents, as he came to call them, are some of the showtime intentionally abstract photographic works of fine art and have been hailed as his most important contribution to photography.
Stieglitz's aim was not to distill the essence of clouds but to transform them into an abstract linguistic communication of form expressive of his feelings. Past removing any reference points and allowing the photographs to exist viewed in any orientation, Stieglitz "was destabilising your [the viewer's] relationship with nature in gild to have you lot think less nearly nature, not to deny that it's a photograph of a cloud, but to think more than about the feeling that the cloud formation evokes." (Sarah Greenough, 1995)
These images had a huge impact at the fourth dimension, specially considering photography had merely been recognised every bit a distinct art class for almost fifteen years, and that inside this short fourth dimension no tradition of brainchild had existed.
Georgia O'Keeffe
In 1916 Stieglitz first saw the work of the American artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 – 1986) and was impressed by the expressive power of her big abstract drawings.
The following year he hosted her first solo exhibition at his gallery '291' in New York. He also started to photo O'Keeffe, posing her in front of her work and finding means to fuse her body with the compositions. This was the start of an extraordinary collaboration that lasted over 20 years and resulted in over 300 photographs. Stieglitz and O'Keeffe'due south artistic dialogue extended to a profound influence on each other's piece of work. They became lovers and married in 1924.
Stieglitz saw his photographs of O'Keeffe as a composite portrait. Seen together, they explore themes of multiplicity, fragmentation, time and change, as well every bit O'Keeffe's personality, beauty and creativity. Nosotros might also read the portraits as a record of Stieglitz and O'Keeffe'southward love affair and of their remarkable creative synergy.
The portraits of O'Keeffe shown here were taken between 1918 and 1937. The early, sensuous images were taken in the studio and printed on platinum and palladium paper, giving a fine tonal range. Later on, there is a movement away from symbolically charged images to an increasingly frank tape of an individual.
Source: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/alfred-stieglitz-pioneer-of-modern-photography
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