Alfred Stieglitz and Minor White

Alfred Stieglitz and Minor White - Art of Photography Alfred Stieglitz and Minor White are both important figures in the art of photography. Their efforts have contributed greatly to the growth of photography as a recognized art form. Individually, they have created techniques that have revolutionized both the artistic and scientific aspects of photography, techniques that continue to influence photographers today. This paper presents a comparative study of Stieglitz and White's work, focusing on photographs that were taken from the 1860s to the 1940s.

The first part of the paper is an analysis of how the prevailing artistic and social climate influenced both photographers. The next part then looks at how these influences are revealed in the photographs created by Stieglitz and White. In the conclusion, this paper reflects on the two artists' enduring legacies in the field of photography. Alfred Stieglitz began his career as the leader of pictorialism, a movement that advocated that photography was more than scientific advancement and that the camera was not just a new machine.

Instead, Stieglitz argued that the camera was akin to the paintbrush. By using the camera, an artist creates a photograph, the same way a painter wields a brush to create a painting (Stieglitz 12). In terms of technique, Stieglitz also had much in common with the Impressionists, the European art movement who used the city and its growing industrialization as subjects for their artwork. They depicted images such as steam engines and machinery, seen through an atmosphere of early morning haze.

Stieglitz used this "painterly" style to create subject photographs that, in addition to recording images, could also be seen as very expressive works of art. He believed that photographs could be mediums to convey emotions such as joy or melancholy (Stieglitz 16). Stieglitz named this idea of conveying emotions through photographs as the principle of "equivalent." For the artist, the principle of equivalence was an intrinsic part of photography, as important as other elements like light and shadow.

This idea of equivalence would have a strong impact on younger photographers such as Minor White. For White, photography was also akin to a mirror. When looking at a photograph, White believed that the individual viewer should be able to discern "something within himself - that is, the photograph mirrors something in himself" (White, 20). White thus espoused the idea that a photograph can transcend its original purposes of recording an image. Instead, pictures could evoke emotional responses, the same way classical music could.

The principle of equivalence would govern much of White's later work, in the artist's quest for a greater meaning through photography. The principle of using photographs to convey emotions can be clearly seen in the two men's photographs. For example, in "The Hand of Man," Stieglitz depicts a steam engine heading towards the camera through a thick fog. This picture, taken in 1903, was altered through the use of soft-focus effects. The tones and contrasts have been kept to a minimum, adding to the soft atmosphere.

The overall melancholy tone of the picture was further enhanced by the use of deep areas in the foreground of the picture. In another picture, "The Terminal," Stieglitz took a picture of a man tending a horse in a New York City street during the winter. The artist, moved by how the man took time to nourish his horse, took this everyday scene and imbued it with his own meaning.

About this picture, Stieglitz writes of identifying with the horse, "how fortunate (he) seemed having a human being to tend to him." The artist later writes that the scene "expressed (his) own sense of loneliness in my country" (Stieglitz, qtd in Naef 12). Like Stieglitz, White also took pains to imbue expression in his photographs. In "Front Street, Portland, Oregon, 1939," White depicts a row of Victorian buildings flanking a street that curves off into the distance.

The natural sun brings the elaborate facades of the buildings on the left side of the street in clear detail, a sharp contrast to the empty street. The long shadows cast by the buildings on the empty streets further emphasize the lack of humans and the picture's the sense of melancholy. This sense of melancholy is also evident in "Ranch, Grande Ronde Valley, Oregon, 1941." In this picture, White fills the bottom two thirds of the picture with a pattern of farms, arranged in right angles to a bank of wooden.