Alfred Stieglitz

Stieglitz, who was born in 1864 in New Jersey, was a giant of a photographer in late 19th century until his death in 1946. His long term ambition had been to promote photography as a serious art at a time when it was regarded as a technical tool rather than art form. He was an exceptional photographer. He was the editor of a widely respected photography publication called “Camera Work”. He curated exhibitions of photography and promoted modern art from Europe at his gallery, 291 on Fifth Avenue, New York. For example, in 1908 he made use of his connections in Europe to show drawings by Rodin  and work by Matisse. He was a founder, with the help of Edward Steichen, of the Photo-Seccession movement in 1902 that exhibited work from the gallery. Steiglitz was a non conformist hence the succession as he had little time for the institutional, academic and un-adventurous. 

Stieglitz reacted against the widespread attempt by photographers to mimic impressionist or pictorial art. He wanted photography to be accepted  as a truthful representation of reality. 

“There are many schools of painting. Why should there not be many schools of photographic art? There is hardly a right and a wrong in these matters, but there is truth, and that should form the basis of all works of art.” 

Steiglitz not only promoted photography as an art but also promoted the likes of Cezanne, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, Brancusi, and others at 291. 

Stieglitz was very much for living in the present.

“I have always been a great believer in today. Most people live either in the past or in the future, so that they really never live at all. So many people are busy worrying about the future of art or society, they have no time to preserve what is.”

As a photographer, Stieglitz liked to visualise what a photograph could be and wanted to capture the excitement of what he saw. There is a great story behind him taking perhaps his most famous photograph “The Steerage” taken in 1907. He was sailing with his first wife and daughter for Europe and could no longer stand his surroundings by the third day so he walked as far forward as he could until he came to the end of the deck. He stood alone looking down on to the lower decks. The scene fascinated him and he was drawn to the figure of a young man wearing a straw hat.

“A round straw hat; the funnel leaning left, the stair-way leaning right; the white drawbridge, its railings made of chain; white suspenders  crossed on the back of a man below;  circular iron machinery; a mast that cut the sky, completing a triangle, I stood spellbound. I saw shapes related to one another - a picture of shapes, and underlying it, a new vision that held me: simple people; the feeling of ship, ocean, sky; a sense of release that I was away from the mob called rich. Rembrandt came into my mind and I wondered would he have felt as I did.” 

Steiglitz saw the photo he wanted but did not have his camera with him. He raced to his cabin, raced back with his Graflex and one unexposed plate. He hoped the scene would remain the same. Fortunately the man with the straw hat had not moved, nor had the man in the cross suspenders, and a woman with a child on her lap remained motionless where she had been before. He took the photo and hoped that it would  become a picture “based on related shapes and deepest human feeling”. Fortunately, when he developed the photo on his arrival in Europe he achieved what he saw.

“Some months later, after The Steerage was printed, I felt satisfied, something I have not been very often. When it was published, I felt that if all my photographs were lost and I were represented only by The Steerage, that would be quite all right.”

Steiglitz did not refer to his decisive moment, but this is essentially what he had captured in his photograph. He saw what moved him in the composition he visualised and despite the course of some time nothing had changed and he was able to produce a remarkable picture.

Pre-visualisation and the decisive moment are really keys to Steiglitz photography as was his desire to express his aesthetic feelings.

 “I go out into the world with my camera and come across something that excites me emotionally, spiritually or aesthetically. I see the image in my mind’s eye. I make the photograph and print it as the equivalent of what I saw and felt.”