Alfred Stieglitz: major works and contributions

Alfred Stieglitz was one of those great artists who helped to forever shape the destiny of art. He was in a relatively unique historical position because, as a man born in 1864, he existed at the very earliest stages both of a total renovation of American culture and also in the very early ages of photographic capability. Cameras were still a very new medium; in America it was largely Alfred Stieglitz who was taught his generation that photography truly could be used not just as a historical curio but also as a form of art.

Wadsworth Atheneum, in describing their show of his work, writes eloquently of the way that Steiglitz was "determined to win acceptance of photography as an art form equal to painting and sculpture...[and] sometimes referred to all visual arts as 'camera work.' " in his own time, Stieglitz was famous as both a patron of the arts and as an artist himself. Today, he remains famous both for his contribution to the development of the style of photography, and the striking nature of his work.

As a patron of the arts, Steiglitz played an important role. Most of the recent exhibitions or explorations of his work, such as the documentary "The Eloquent Eye" or the shows at the Wadsworth Atheneum or the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, display his work along side those of his wife (the painter Georgia O'Keefe) and many proteges. "The current show focuses on Alfred Stieglitz as one of America's most important modernist photographers, and explores the considerable influence his work had on the American modernists he so passionately supported, exhibited, and promoted at his New York gallery,'291'. It also emphasizes the visual exchange that took place between photography and painting,' " ("Wadsworth Atheneum") Yet Stieglitz was not merely a dabbler or financier of art -- he himself was an innovator. Stieglitz might be considered a devotee, in his youth, of the European movements of impressionism. He took this movements' concern with light and with redefining the mundane, and turned it into an art movement focused around photography. This is fitting, as photography really is nothing more or less than making pictures out of light itself. In many ways it was Stieglitz who, in America, most fought for a change in the status of photography. As the educational site "get the picture" describes it: "In early days, photographs were considered an advance of science, not art. Cameras were machines, and everyone knew that machines didn't make art; people made art. But when Alfred Stieglitz made [his] picture[s] he was leading a movement called Pictorialism, which promoted the photograph as art, the same kind of art as a drawing or painting."

Stieglitz body of work extends from the 1880s until 1937, when he officially retired; during that time he went through many striking changes and (with his colleagues) developed new styles of art photography.."..Stieglitz's own body of photographs... chart(s) the development of artistic photography from the turn of the century to the 1930s, from a soft-focus painterly vision to the new sharp-focus precision of 'straight.' photography." (Ackley) Looking at the images archived online, one can definitely see this shift in his work. Earlier works, such as the 1893 "Winter on Fifth Avenue, New York," show a sort of washed-out fuzziness reminiscent of impressionist styles. Composition and contrast is less central to the image than in certain later photos, but the sense of texture and lightplay is vital. The lines of snow and buildings have an almost brushed-on look.

Icy Night," which was taken that same year, shows the beginnings of a sharper form of photography, with more contrast and starkness of black sky against snow, and the clear lines of trees against the blur of the horizon. Slightly later images, though, such as "The Steerage" made in 1907, show far crisper lines, much higher contrast, and a clearer sense of the photography defined by its composition.

This progression would continue, as Stieglitz increasingly explored the boundaries of photography.

During his life, "Stieglitz witnessed New York transform from a sleeping giant of cobblestone streets and horse-drawn trolleys to a vibrant symbol of the modern metropolis, with soaring skyscrapers becoming visible emblems of a new age...." (American Masters) He was, as it were, at a pivotal moment in history, and the metamorphosis of his age is demonstrated in his pictures. Perhaps his later development is best traced in the many portraits he made of his wife, which show his further understanding the it was not enough to photograph a subject, but that one must use the photograph to capture something that might otherwise be ignored. As he progressed, he started to show that "a conventional face shot was insufficient for capturing or revealing the complex character of his subject." (Wadsworth Atheneum)

Eventually, when he took his 1920 "A portrait" of his wife, the shot would be entirely of her powerful and expressive hands. This sort of innovation represented a grand leap from photography as portraiture or as a mere archive of landscapes into a powerful art form capable of segregating, capturing, subverting, and framing reality.