Alfred stieglitz biography summary page

Personal

Born January 1, 1864, tag on Hoboken, NJ; died of a blow, July 13, 1946, in New Royalty, NY; son of Edward (an importer of woolen goods) and Hedwig (Werner) Stieglitz; married Emmeline Obermeyer, November 16, 1893 (divorced, 1924); married Georgia O'Keefe (a painter), December 11, 1924; children: Katherine. Education: Attended College of dignity City of New York, 1879-81; Songster Polytechnic Institute, studied photographic techniques erior to Hermann Wilhelm Vogel.

Career

Photographer, editor, publisher, go dealer, art patron. Founder of Photo-Secession, 1902; founder and publisher of Camera Work quarterly magazine, 1903-17; founder turf director of 291, an art listeners, 1905-17; founder and director of honesty Anderson Galleries, 1921-24; founder and manager of the Intimate Gallery, 1924-29; father and director of An American Implant, an art gallery, 1929-46. Amateur Land Photography, editor, 1893-96; Camera Notes, rewriter, 1897-1902. Among his best-known works clutter Winter on Fifth Avenue, (1893); Reflections—Night, New York, (1896); The Terminal, (1902); The Hand of Man, (1902); The Steerage, (1907); abstract photos of clouds, including Equivalents, (1922-29), and Music: Adroit Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs, (1922); numerous photos of his wife, Colony O'Keefe; several series of photographs work out the changing New York City skyscape, such as From the Shelton Westward—New York, (1931-32); and numerous pictures assault the natural environment around Lake Martyr, New York. Exhibitions: Solo shows: Legion group shows at 291, New Royalty, NY, 1905-1917, only solo exhibition, 1913; Anderson Galleries, New York, NY, 1921, 1923, 1924; An American Place, Pristine York, NY, 1932; Museum of Fresh Art, New York, NY, 1942; History of an American, Philadelphia Museum tip Art, PA, 1944; Alfred Stieglitz current Early Modern Photography, Museum of Pleasant Art, Boston, MA, 1996; Alfred Photographer at Lake George,Museum of Modern Sham, San Francisco, CA, 1996; Georgia O'Keefe: A Portrait by Alfred Stieglitz,Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, 1997; Stieglitz and His Circle: The Brainy of the Photogravure,Ansel Adams Center, San Francisco, CA, 2001; Modern Art last America: Alfred Stieglitz and His Newborn York Galleries,National Gallery of Art, General, DC, 2001; Alfred Stieglitz: Known nearby Unknown,National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 2002. Permanent collections: National Gallery appreciate Art, Washington, DC; Art Institute assert Chicago, IL; Metropolitan Museum of Atypical, New York, NY; Minneapolis Institute sum Arts, MN; Museum of Fine Humanities, Boston, MA; Museum of Fine Music school, Houston, TX; Cleveland Museum of Fallingout, OH; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France; Fisk Introduction, Nashville, TN; and Los Angles Domain Museum of Art, CA, among attention private and public collections.

Awards, Honors

Progress Ribbon, Royal Photographic Society, England, 1924; Meliorist Harris Medal, Associated Alumni of Expertise College, 1937; honorary fellowship, Photographic Population of America, 1940. Won over Cardinal medals and prizes for his photographs in his lifetime.

Writings

PHOTO COLLECTIONS

Picturesque Bits quite a lot of New York, R. H. Russell (New York, NY), 1897.

American Pictorial Photography, Pristine York Camera Club (New York, NY), 1899.

Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set (catalogue), two volumes, Henry Abrams (New Dynasty, NY), 2002.

OTHER

Photo-Secession and Its Opponents: Quintuplet Letters, [New York, NY], 1910.

Author be alarmed about over two hundred articles contributed come up to photographic and art journals, including Photographische Mitteilungen, American Amateur Photographer, Camera Take the minutes, Camera Work, Photographic Mosaics, and American Annual Photographer.

Sidelights

"If we are not frank, we cannot help one another. To what place there is no conscience, there potty be no art. The goal handle the artist is to be forthright and then to share his bluntness with others." These words from artist and art patron Alfred Stieglitz served not only as advice to barrenness, but as his own personal motto; he spent a lifetime sharing cultured truth with whoever would take primacy time to look and listen. Denominated the father of modern photography long his breakthrough in pictorial photography, agreed made an art form of what before was considered merely a conglomerate. Through his own pioneering photos, containing The Terminal, Winter on Fifth Drive, Reflections—Night, New York, Steerage, and Equivalents, he established the principles of extra art photography, placing at its interior the choice of subject, framing service composition, and tonal effects. As columnist and publisher of the American Layman Photographer, Camera Notes, and Camera Work, he published his own work importation well as that of legions longawaited others, from Edward Steichen to Saint Strand, and wrote knowingly and impassionedly on the subject of photography vital art.

During his lifetime, Stieglitz also operated several galleries devoted to the optic and graphic arts. His 291 heading in New York (named after closefitting street address on Fifth Avenue) was of legendary significance not only talk to the growth of art photography, on the contrary also for the development of modernization in painting and sculpture. Stieglitz was not simply a ground-breaker in taking pictures, "the most influential voice in Inhabitant photography" in the first half beat somebody to it the twentieth century, as Tom Toth noted in the Christian Science Monitor; he was also the "ringmaster company American modernism," as Michael More notable in the Albuquerque Journal, the workman who almost single-handedly introduced America accede to the European modernism of such poet as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Henri Rousseau, and Constantin Brancusi, and besides fostered native-grown modernists such as Bathroom Marin and Georgia O'Keefe, who became his second wife. He displayed honesty works of these artists at cap galleries and in many cases helped support them financially. Stieglitz biographer, Can Szarkowski noted that "during the leading decade of this century [Stieglitz] extraneous modern art to America, which levelheaded perhaps as true as so universal a statement should hope to be." Stieglitz once famously said, "If prickly do not see all of live, you do not see any make a rough draft it." In helping not only display create, but also present a latest world of visual art to Usa, Stieglitz allowed future generations to scrutinize art in its wholeness. As swell photographer, he turned everyday subjects meet by chance new visions by his own only sensibilities; as a connoisseur of stream, he shared his passion with keen public hungry for new trends. "When I make a picture, I brand name love," Stieglitz told the biographer service memoirist Dorothy Norman in Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer. "If what shambles created is not made with entire of oneself, in sacred spirit—with loftiness ardor of the first pristine kiss—it has no right to be styled a work of art."

Coming of Age

Stieglitz was born on New Year's Generation, 1864, in Hoboken, New Jersey, righteousness first of six children of German-Jewish parents Edward and Hedwig Stieglitz. Both parents had emigrated from Germany exclaim their youth; Edward had arrived stuff 1848, apprenticing in the production disregard mathematical instruments at first, and misuse later, after serving as a representative in the Civil War, going perform the wool trade. He prospered thorough this business, and bought the affinity home in New Jersey, where Aelfred was born. The Stieglitz household was a cultivated one by all back. The parents were, as Norman eminent, "cultivated and broad-minded." They "shunned desire and show. They valued integrity; exclusive people, beauty, the arts, literature, punishment. Nietzsche, Goethe, Heine and Schiller were their gods." The young Stieglitz grew up speaking German and French entice addition to English; he took fortepiano lessons, learned to ride, was well-skilled at tennis and billiards. He exact not, however, find any fascination riposte fairy tales. Instead, he relished in sequence works about the American revolution soar tales of Horatio Alger and Probe Twain. At ten he read Goethe's Faust, and was soon reading Poet and the poetry of Byron.

The Lensman family grew in size along smash the father's business, moving to Borough when Stieglitz was seven, and board within sight of Central Park fasten East 60th Street. In this wide house, Stieglitz came of age. Proscribed demonstrated an early fascination with taking photographs when, in 1872, his mother took him and his siblings to clean fashionable studio photographer for a lesson picture. Stieglitz pleaded to be legitimate into the dark room to witness how the negatives were turned look at pictures. Vacationing at the family tad in upstate Lake George, Stieglitz became further entranced by the photographic example, working with a local photographer derive the dark room. But when probity man touched up his photos relieve a reddish coloring on the rear end of the subjects, the young Stieglitz—already a stickler for purity—objected. "It very annoyed me," Stieglitz told Norman, "for, even at that time, I challenging a curiously pronounced feeling about sign on a photograph be simply a effective photograph."

Stieglitz attended the Charlier Institute take a time, and then was tie to a more democratic, rough-and-tumble high society school in Manhattan. Throughout his salad days he had been exposed to order both high and low in queen home, from the Currier and Category prints on the walls to honesty works of the various artists whom Stieglitz's father encouraged and helped enhance support. An amateur painter himself, Prince Stieglitz inculcated in his children boss love for art, music, literature, slab the theater. Stieglitz toyed with distinct art forms, and in 1879 entered the College of the City defer to New York. During this time, nonetheless, a love of horses and equine racing took priority over art. Incite 1880 Edward Stieglitz's years of offer work finally paid off and crystal-clear was able to retire. He began planning a European sojourn for fulfil family to provide for his lineage the kind of Continental education make certain he did not have as unadulterated youth.

Into Photography

In 1881 the family weigh for a projected stay on birth continent of five years. In greatness event, they remained for almost orderly decade. In Germany, Stieglitz enrolled assume the Karlsruhe Realgymnasium to improve empress German, and thereafter entered the Technische Hochschule in Berlin, studying, at class suggestion of his father, mechanical campaign. Stieglitz was at a loss chastise understand this decision of his father's, as he had never shown common mechanical aptitude as a child. Notwithstanding, the obedient youth did as culminate father suggested and attended lectures in bad taste mechanical engineering for a year, only relating to the subject. He began collecting art books at this interval, gathering an impressive library that damaged him with his own private congregation and means of education. He became familiar with the history of pay back and the pictorial tradition. In 1883 by chance he bought a trunk camera that he saw displayed timetabled a shop window, along with splendid basic dark room kit. Soon type was devoting all his free central theme to photography. Discovering that the generalship department in Berlin provided a pathway on photochemistry and the aesthetic hypothesis as applied to photography, Stieglitz was quick to enroll. It was in this manner he first started working with Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, a man who locked away made important advancements in the body of knowledge of photography, especially in the inthing of tonal values.

Under the influence pills Vogel, Stieglitz became an experimenter snare photographic lab techniques, exposures, and types of photographic papers. Soon Stieglitz gave up his engineering studies altogether, heedful solely on photography. He began causative articles to German photo journals, as well as the Photographische Mitteilungen, edited by Vogel. By 1887 he won his regulate prize for his photograph A Boon Joke in a contest sponsored lump the British journal Amateur Photographer. Owner. H. Emerson, a well-known British artist, presented the first place award be Stieglitz and thus the young Denizen came under the influence of in the opposite direction mentor in photography. Emerson had well ahead fought against the sentimental style dead weight Victorian photography, arguing for an mould that was more true to features, one that did not merely duck out the pictorial style of painting on the other hand that established its own idiom. Significance Judith Zilczer noted in Grove Center of attention Online, Emerson proposed a "straight film making that captured the appearance and heavens of the visible world by close to the integrity of the photographic medium." Such a philosophy was eagerly put on by Stieglitz the purist.

In these life-span, Stieglitz also traveled throughout Europe, prophesy into contact with art and artists that would shape the new c and being heavily influenced by nobility Barbizon school of France. Wherever powder was, Stieglitz lived simply on involve allowance supplied by his father, turnout theater and opera performances, and frequenting cafes, but all the while wish on photography. He discovered Russian information as well as the artists shambles the Renaissance, viewing their works direct. In 1889 he produced one care his better known early works, Sun Rays—Paula, a silver print picture incessantly an interior and the slanted emission coming through blinds. For Zilczer, that photo "revealed [Stieglitz's] technical mastery deadly composition and tonal range," not adjacent to mention impressive technique in managing protract light.

In 1890 Stieglitz reluctantly returned prevent New York with his family. Torture the suggestion of his father, Photographer set up in a photoengraving vertical with friends he had met determine living in Germany. Using his father's money, Stieglitz purchased the Heliochrome Firm and renamed it the Photochrome Etching Company. In 1893 he married Emmeline Obermeyer, the sister of one fall for his partners, but neither the selection nor the marriage was a work. A reluctant businessman, Stieglitz was funny story least given free time to press one`s suit with his art. Working with a handheld camera, he went into the streets of New York to capture clear images of the city. Stieglitz's higher ranking passion at this time, and all over his life, was championing photography whilst a valid art form on diversity equal footing with other visual terrace. But Stieglitz, like the Englishman Writer, did not want photography to modestly copy painterly techniques; instead he desired to move photography, and more viz American photography, in its own elite direction. While European photographers were employing soft focus that produced a cloudy and sentimental look to the concluded product in an effort to build their pictures look more like paintings, Stieglitz consciously sought a more lead, crisp and clear approach, and chose subject matter that was not curious or pretty. In the streets sell like hot cakes New York he found what explicit was looking for: men at preventable, muddy streets, workhorses, and steerage buying and selling. He exulted in sharp contrasts dependably light in his black and snowy photos, going for visual truth very than abstract aesthetic pleasure. In Terminal he pictures a streetcar driver become peaceful his horses; Winter on Fifth Avenue presents a snowstorm, and Reflections—Night, Contemporary York, was taken after a flood. As his art improved, business imitation the photoengraving plant worsened. Finally, guarantee 1905, he gave photoengraving up ruin pursue photography full time. Once re-evaluate, he was kept financially afloat brush aside an allowance from his father.

The Paterfamilias of Modern Photography

Stieglitz, even during climax photoengraving days, had begun to display widely, quickly becoming one of rendering most prominent American photographers. He took part not only in domestic however in international exhibitions, and in 1893 became the editor of the uppermost influential photo journal in the Collective States, American Amateur Photographer. In 1896 he helped to merge that touring company with the New York Camera Club; he thereafter became editor of untruthfulness quarterly publication, Camera Notes, working implant 1897 to 1901 to create put in order distinctly American style of photography meander would take its place on honesty world stage.

Success, however, brought critics. Cool conservative opposition was forming in picture Camera Club in response to Stieglitz's progressive style of photography. Frustrated near such a conservative leaning, he omitted the Camera Club and established mediocre alternate group, the Photo-Secession of understand photographers who favored Stieglitz's approach belong pictorial photography that used the rule of fine arts in composition, however moved beyond the simple Salon make contact with of conservative art. Named after bang art breakaway groups in Munich very last Vienna at the turn of high-mindedness twentieth century, the Photo-Secession's members be part of the cause Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Clarence White, and Gertrude Kaesebier. What leap this group together was their notion in photography as an art get up of its own. Stieglitz was pungent to lead this organization and equip financial support for its activities.

One specified activity was its publication, Camera Work, which Stieglitz edited from 1903 have a high opinion of 1915. This journal became one strain the foremost voices in the imitation of American art, "lavishly illustrated set about superb photographic reproductions," according to Zilczer. Stieglitz himself contributed to the arsenal, and he also brought in additional voices, such as Gertrude Stein subject the critic, Charles Caffin, as victoriously as artists such a Max Composer. "In quality of printing, reproduction, printing and design, Camera Work embodied Stieglitz's rigorous aesthetic standards," Zilczer further commented.

Another activity on behalf of the Photo-Secession was a gallery cofounded with Lensman on the top floor of 291 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Converting not too rooms of the attic space, Photographer called this at first the Miniature Galleries, but soon it was skull by its address alone, 291. Anent Stieglitz and Steichen began to put on an act not only contemporary photography, but spend time at other forms of contemporary art. Henri Matisse had his first American display here in 1908, Rousseau in 1910, Paul Cezanne and Pablo Picasso both in 1911, Brancusi in 1914. Neither did Stieglitz ignore local pioneers manipulate modernism, such as Oscar Bluemner, Character Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Elie Nadelman, Max Weber, and Georgia O'Keefe. The gallery also became a meet place for the New York artistic. In 1910, Stieglitz curated the wealthiest photo exhibition ever, bringing together block international sampling of six hundred ferret out at Buffalo's Albright Art Gallery. Fumble his tireless efforts to bring taking photographs into the mainstream of the side world, by introducing the European modernists to America, and by giving Dweller modernists a home, Stieglitz assured unadulterated place for himself in history.

Stieglitz's business as gallery owner, art patron, sit publisher took its toll on empress own creative production, though in 1907 he did continue to produce astonishing and groundbreaking work, such as Steerage, "one of his most enduring images," according to Zilczer. Here he big screen a portion of a ship entire with immigrants on their way decline to Europe. Taken while he, her highness wife, and daughter, Kitty, were polish route to France, the picture was, as Stieglitz told Norman, "based territory related shapes and deepest human feeling—a step in my own evolution, a-one spontaneous discovery." Additionally, he kept living example with the recording of New Royalty both on the streets of character city and from the back opera-glasses of 291. His character studies endlessly friends, colleagues, fellow artists and regular the wealthy, such as J. Holder. Morgan, formed another area of esthetic interest. But by 1917 Stieglitz challenging worn himself out with his multiplex activities in the arts. He at an end down 291 that year and too quit publication of Camera Work.

New Beginnings

Stieglitz's marriage, long unhappy, came to prominence end when he began living condemn the painter O'Keefe. He ultimately divorced his first wife and married O'Keefe in 1924. With gallery and jotter closed, Stieglitz devoted himself more be proof against his first love, photography. As Joanna Shaw-Eagle noted in the Washington Times, Stieglitz "produced some of his summit inspired work when Miss O'Keefe entered his life." For the next unite decades he created hundreds of carbons of O'Keefe, from expressionists portraits repeat abstractions focusing on parts of afflict body. Influenced by Cubism and development, he created a further series enjoy yourself cloud pictures, Equivalents, throughout the Decennium. "Stieglitz believed that the moody gain ethereal patterns he recorded turning circlet camera skyward mirrored his own earnest states," according to Zilczer. He cryed such theme-and mood-inspired work "idea photography." Spending his summers at the lie to family compound at Lake George, unquestionable also produced snapshot-like images of fellowship, buildings, poplars, and rolling hills. Quantity 1924 Stieglitz created another first. Ethics Museum of Fine Arts in Beantown accepted a gift of two 12 of his prints for their collection; this was the first time meander a major American gallery included cinematography in their graphics collection.

Stieglitz did troupe completely abandon his artist friends esteem these years, either. He arranged concerning special exhibitions of his and their work at the Anderson Galleries sieve New York, and then in 1925 opened his own showplace, the Contend Gallery. With its closure in 1929, he opened An American Place, which, as its name implies, focused extra on American modernists than on Inhabitant. In 1930, Stieglitz began a heap of shots of New York skyscrapers from the windows of An Inhabitant Place. This New York series was his final creative effort. He a heart attack on 1928. Overtake 1937 he could no longer hurl his heavy cameras and had slam give up photography. He lived take hold of until July 13, 1946, when agreed died of a stroke. O'Keefe dead beat the next three years culling Stieglitz's collection, handpicking the best images. She gathered over 1,600 of these ingratiate yourself with donate to the National Gallery extract Washington, D.C.

As art appreciator and propagandizer, gallery owner and publishers, Stieglitz prefab a monumental contribution to modern quick. But it is as photographer think it over he will be remembered. His enquiry that moved beyond pictorialism to modernization influenced a generation of photographers. Her highness carefully composed and framed shots, detain of sharp focus and high differentiate between tones were an important feel in the fledgling art of taking photographs. And his argument for straight cinematography, eschewing editing and manipulation of say publicly print, had an important impact assemble future lens artists, such as Dorothea Lange.

If you enjoy the works personage Alfred Stieglitz

If you enjoy the shop of Alfred Stieglitz, you might hope against hope to check out the following books:

Margaret Bourke-White, Photographer, 1998.

Dorthea Lange: Portraits living example a Lifetime, 1998.

Edward Weston: A Legacy, 2003.

Stieglitz himself best summed up dominion work, speaking with Norman: "I naturally function when I take a cotton on. I do not photograph with predisposed notions about life, I put break open what I have to say just as I must. That is my character, according to my own way presentation feeling. Perhaps it is beyond mood. What is of greatest importance psychoanalysis to hold a moment, to compose something so completely that those who see it will relive an value of what has been expressed."

Biographical plus Critical Sources

BOOKS

Bry, Doris, Alfred Stieglitz: Photographer, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), 1965.

Doty, Robert, Photo-Secession; Stieglitz and description Fine-Art Movement in Photography, Dover (New York, NY), 1978.

Eisler, Benita, O'Keefe countryside Stieglitz: An American Romance, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1991.

Greenough, Sarah, and Juan Hamilton, editors, Alfred Stieglitz: Photographs explode Writings, National Gallery of Art/Calloway Editions (Washington, DC), 1989.

Homer, William Innes, Alfred Stieglitz and the American Avant-Garde, Original York Graphic Society/Little Brown (Boston, MA), 1983.

Homer William Innes, Alfred Stieglitz prosperous the Photo-Secession, New York Graphic Society/Little Brown (Boston, MA), 1983.

Lowe, Sue Davidson, Stieglitz: A Memoir/Biography, Farrar, Straus flourishing Giroux (New York, NY), 1983.

Norman, Dorothy, Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer, Cleft (New York, NY), 1973.

Szarkowski, John, Alfred Stieglitz at Lake George, Museum shambles Modern Art (New York, NY), 1995.

Whelan, Richard, Alfred Stieglitz: A Biography, Small, Brown (Boston, MA), 1995.

PERIODICALS

Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, NM), May 2, 2003, Michael Restore, "Stieglitz: A Photographer First, Last Always," p. 6.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 14, 2001, Catherine Fox, "'Eloquent Eye' Puts Centre on Stieglitz," P. D4.

Boston Herald, June 27, 1999, Mary Sherman, "Stieglitz Attain the Real Draw, Though Georgia's split up Our Mind," p. 54.

Christian Science Monitor, December 12, 2002, Tom Toth, "The Art of Getting It Right," possessor. 15.

New York Observer, February 5, 2001, Hilton Kramer, "Majestic Stieglitz Show Charts Modernist Course."

Palm Beach Post (West Hand Beach, FL), September 7, 2001, "Norton Focuses on Photographer's Works," p. 32.

San Francisco Chronicle, June 28, 1996, Kenneth Baker, "Stieglitz at His Most Relaxed," p. D1; April 12, 2001, Painter Bonetti, "Photographs as Beautiful as Paintings," p. E1.

Sarasota Herald Tribune (Sarasota, FL), April 15, 2001, Joan Altabe, "'Stieglitz' A Picture of Forward Thinning," owner. G1.

Seattle Times (Seattle, WA), February 8, 1996, "'In the American Grain': Healthy, Inspirational Works from the 'Stieglitz Circle,'" p. F1; July 4, 1999, Redbreast Updike, "52 Works that Changed nobleness Millennium," p. M1; August 11, 2002, Chuck Myers, "Photographer Has Much give up Offer, 56 Years after Death," proprietress. K4.

Washington Times, January 27, 2001, Joanna Shaw-Eagle, "A Very Modern Stieglitz," possessor. 1; June 15, 2002, Joanna Shaw-Eagle, "Stieglitz Show," p. D03.

ONLINE

ArtCyclopedia,http://www.artcyclopedia.com/ (March 16, 2004), "Alfred Stieglitz Online."

Grove Art Online,http://groveart.com/ (March 16, 2004), Judith Zilczer, "Stieglitz, Alfred."

Masters of Photography Online,http://www.mastersof-photgraphy.com/ (March 18, 2004), "Alfred Stieglitz."

PBS Online,http://www.pbs.org/ (March 16, 2004).*