Alfred Stieglitz's "The City of Ambitions" and modernist photography

¶ … City of Ambitions.

Alfred Stieglitz

Modernist Photography

Photogravure

By the early 20th century, photography had established itself as more than a means of documentary evidence. The medium had the potential to convey the artist's impressions as well as political content. Photographers like Alfred Stieglitz capitalized on the power of the medium to depict social and political realities without sacrificing aesthetics. "The City of Ambitions" is one example of Stieglitz's early work, a large portion of which uses urban life as its focus.

"The City of Ambitions" is New York, the American -- even global -- hub of capitalist enterprise. Stieglitz captures New York's industrial side. Not only does the photographer wait for the time of day during which factory smoke is at its most visible, but Stieglitz also includes in the composition multiple features of urban architecture including the river dock and the burgeoning high rises sprouting up around it and beyond. The photogravure technique enables a soft effect, which is an apt counterpart to the otherwise harsh and angular imagery of the edifices. As photography could still be considered a new art form, Stieglitz is clearly experimenting with composition with "The City of Ambitions." The walkway in the bottom right foreground provides the necessary diagonal line drawing the eye towards the center of the image, where a flag waves. Plumes of smoke dominate the landscape, even though solid buildings make up the substantial bulk. Both horizontal and vertical lines keep the eye moving.

Movement and progress are in fact core themes of the urban landscape and modernist aesthetic. Moreover, photographers like Stieglitz used their medium "to expose society's evils ... the degrading conditions of workers in big-city slums, the barbarism of child labor," ("Early Documentary Photography"). Unlike some of Stieglitz's contemporaries like Riis, the photographer's goal is not necessarily to overtly critique urban life but to simply show it as it is without judgment. There is beauty in industry, and yet the viewer is free to explore the darker sides of urbanization and industrialization simply by contemplating the workers in the factories, the air quality in the city, and the crowded conditions symbolized by the congested skyscrapers.

"Fountain"

Marcel Duchamp

1917

Dada

Reinforced steel

Although the Bauhaus movement began in Weimar, the school itself shifted to Dessau in 1926. The founder and key figure of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, was an architect who designed the new Dessau building to house students of the Bauhaus movement. Students of Bauhaus studied not only architecture but all types of arts and crafts: representing a revolutionary approach to art instruction. "Bauhaus effectively leveled the old hierarchy of the arts, placing crafts on par with fine arts such as sculpture and painting, and paving the way for many of the ideas that have inspired artists in the late 20th century," ("Bauhaus").

By the time Gropius designed the Bauhaus building in Dessau, the Bauhaus movement had already taken root as one of the most important methods of fusing creative arts with industry and manufacturing. The movement was in many ways a reaction against the mass manufacturing trend in capitalist enterprise, which denied the emotional, creative, and intellectual connection between artist/craftsman and the work itself. Therefore, Bauhaus was based on fundamentally Marxist principles and critiqued the psychological and social alienation that can be a product of assembly-line style production.

Bauhaus became "the most influential modernist art school of the 20th century," largely due to the influence of architect Walter Gropius ("Bauhaus"). However, Gropius worked with painters and other visual artists to show that all elements of design and art could be studied under one roof; hence the Bauhaus school and its different wings. The goal of Bauhaus was "to level the distinction between fine and applied arts, and to reunite creativity and manufacturing," ("Bauhaus"). Bauhaus design and philosophy have indelibly altered the relationship between arts, crafts, design, form, and function.