Alfred Stieglitz

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horses onward at that point I was nearly out of my head but I got the exposure I wanted later at the New York society of amateur photographers before my negative was dry I showed it with great excitement everyone laughed for God's sakes Stig let's throw that damn thing away it's all blurred and not sharp I told him the negative is exactly as I want it to be what I was driving at had nothing to do with blurred or sharp what Stieglitz was driving at was a new vision for a modern world to teach America to see and photography was the epitome of a new way of seeing he is known as the father of modern photography but for this rebel against complacent acceptance of the past photography was not enough in Paris a visual revolution was brewing in the early 1900s a revolt against outmoded conventions in art Stieglitz knew the future when he saw it he would boldly introduce these avant-garde works to America to shock the world of the arts out of its blind attachment to the past and to open the eyes of America to the 20th century this legendary figure complex difficult full of contradictions inspired either devotion or irritation the gentlest and kindest of men Stieglitz could be autocratic and brutally critical critics claim that his selfless devotion to art was matched by his devotion to his own fame Stieglitz noble idealism wrestled with his human frailties for he was above all intensely human I was born in Hoboken I am an American Photography is my passion the search for truth is my obsession from 1893 to 1895 I often walked around the streets of New York downtown near the East River taking my hand camera with me I loved the dirty streets and yet it was fascinating I wanted to photograph everything I saw wherever I looked there was a picture that moved me the second hand clothing shops the ragpickers the tattered and the torn all found a warm spot in my heart above all it was the burning idea of photography pushing its possibilities even further the photographing always trying to do something that he thought he could do that they would tell him you couldn't do he was out there by himself Stiglitz was in his element when overcoming difficult weather and light conditions he always saw himself as a rebel even as a young photography student in Berlin in the early 1880s Stieglitz challenged the existing limits on photography his wealthy father who had been born in Germany had sent him to Berlin to study mechanical engineering Stieglitz quickly abandoned engineering when he felt passionately in love with photography the camera fascinated me first as a passion then as an obsession I found that I was the master of the elements that I could do things that have never been done before I worked day and night photographing making prints and he must have been very interesting pupil because he was always trying new things you see he tried to he set up his camera in a darkroom and left it for a day or two to see if anything would be recorded at all doing things like that that most students wouldn't think of doing with a generous allowance from his father Stieglitz spent some of his happiest years traveling and photographing in Austria and Italy you I worked like one possessed people called me that crazy American I didn't see why a photograph could not be a work of art and I studied to make it one he sent pictures to every place where a prize was given and when he got all the medals and all the prizes there was half a shoebox full of them I suppose he had become an authority by then when Stiglitz was called back from Berlin in 1890 on the the death of his favorite sister he was really not ready inside of himself but he realized he was 26 years old and he was aware that the family wanted him to settle down and to be married and all the rest yielding to family pressure Stieglitz tried to be a businessman and a husband he would fail at both in 1893 he married Emeline Overmeyer close friend of the family and wealthy heiress from the start their natures were in conflict Emeline prudish bourgeois to the core Stieglitz anarchistic in full rebellion against the conventional society ma held dear the disaster of their 1894 honeymoon in Europe forecast the disappointments of their marriage Emmie envisioned the Grand Tour but afternoons at the great cooked OTAs dinners its chic restaurants Stieglitz interested only in photography dragged his tearful bride to remote Hamlet's for peasant harvest scenes and to distant lonely shores Emmy was often miserable but the honeymoon trip resulted in some of Stieglitz finest early work the birth of their daughter Kitty who as a child was a favorite subject of his photography did little to heal the rift Stieglitz passion for photography left him little time or taste for family life with his camera he roamed New York in my early work I wanted to document the New York of transition the old gradually passing into the new the spirit of something that endears New York to one who really loves it and are you a sense of greatness a sense of being the metropolis of the country and therefore of the whole new world came into being in New York City the idea existed that New York was typical of modernity typical of the promise of the future at the very turn of the century another idea began to filter into public awareness that the the very greatness of New York City was awaiting its visual representation in the arts a school of New York artists who would represent and reproduce into permanent form visual images of this very exciting and unique place it was the American Impressionists artists who first began to explore in New York City as a subject the impressionist New York was the New York of Fifth Avenue fashionable New York the New York of Henry James the new New York of elevated Zin subways electric lights and crowds was painted by the ashcan artists they stood on the pavement and they looked at the city and they painted what they saw but it was photography that would form our modern vision of the city I determined that photography would be accepted as art however for many critics photography was more of a threat than a promise Photography has become the refuge of every would-be painter to ill endowed and too lazy to complete his studies by invading the territory of our photography has become arts most mortal enemy the photographer has discovered a machine to make his masterpiece of art for him by sticking his head into a black box and letting a machine do everything the fight for photography became my life art was far from the minds of those making family snapshots early in the century charmed by the new Kodak camera and its slogan to the itinerant photographer and the professional intent on pleasing his client the camera was a means to make a living it was not art but social reform that sent pioneer documentary photographer Jacob Riis into the darkest slums of New York and Lewis Hine deep into the coal mines to shed light on the children who labored there for all these the camera was a machine to record faithfully what it saw yet to a small but growing number of photographers proudly proclaiming themselves amateurs this machine could produce art they work to prove it by making their pictures as much like paintings as possible called pictorialism their movement was the modern avant-garde photography of its time you Stevens's photographs are significantly different from any pictorial photographers Stieglitz often turned his camera on the subjects that were immediately around him and most of his photographs were emphatically of their time 1902 was certainly a watershed year for Stiglitz a real turning point it was then that his impatience with the lack of seriousness on the part of most of the camera club members really boiled over he was being thwarted to impose in his dictatorial way his very high standards of what photography should be and so he decided early in 1902 that he would form a elite body of photographers those whom he respected most Edward Steichen Clarence ye gertrude kasebier to name a few of the most prominent and this group was to be the photo secession meaning essentially I want Garth Stieglitz believed that if he could find a talented painter who was also devoted to photography as art it would help the cause and Edward Steichen was that man Steichen became his closest collaborator what drew Stieglitz and Steichen together was a passion for photography that started at the beginning of the century Stieglitz valued Steichen as this creative innovative imaginative energetic wonderful young man who produced beautiful photographs and was the painter Steichen was Stevens's fair-haired boy the Wonder Boy of photography whole editions of camerawork to voted to him he could do no wrong so long as he was a loyal follower Stieglitz always knew the power of publication camerawork was a major weapon in his battle for photography camera work was without any question one of the most beautiful magazines of any sort ever produced the reproductions the foot reviewers for hand pasted onto the pages everything was of absolutely the highest standard great seriousness wonderful whiners the magazine had a tremendous impact each issue would have been passed from hand to hand as a treasured document and this was something that has been of tremendous importance to many many photographers in shaping their work although camerawork and the photo secession were internationally-acclaimed Stieglitz true ambition was to create a great international cell law of photography in New York to rival or eclipsed those of Europe but suitable space was impossible to find or afford with his close collaborator Edward Steichen a solution was found they would arrange a continuous series of highly selective international photography exhibitions in some rooms at 291 Fifth Avenue which they would convert into galleries to this time nothing like this had ever been attempted both men of course took full credit for its being his idea because each of them had that kind of a personality and denying that the other one had that much to do with it but the fact is they really collaborated on the evening of November 5th 1905 the little galleries of the photo secession opened an exhibition it amounted to a miniature but superb salon of American photography and it made photographic history for the first time Americans had a continuing opportunity to see masterpieces of photography from both Europe and America 291 was a great success but to my dismay jealousy soon became rampant among the photographer's around me they had come to believe that my life was to be dedicated solely to them he quickly began to feel that they were becoming complacent that they were assuming themselves to be much better than Stieglitz thought that they were and that they weren't pushing their art they weren't challenging it and he began to think about exhibiting work by other artists from the time after Steichen went to Europe he became more or less the finder of art materials especially not photographs to send back to 291 Alfred who was there all the time was able to take care of the selection of photographs and moved his energy and his days entirely to the gallery Stieglitz was in no hurry to go home he made no secret of the incompatibility of his marriage to Emmeline he complained of her lack of interest in his work her hostility to many of his closest colleagues that she resented spending money on Nair do well artists oh yes you don't spend money on artists they really are supposed to do better if they're a little hungry Stieglitz prided himself on not using Emmys money for 291 or camerawork covering expenses with his own income from his father subscriptions and print sales for five years from 1902 to 1907 Stieglitz rarely used his camera promoting other photographers at the sacrifice of his own work now a shipboard experience would stir him to create one of his most memorable images in June 1907 my wife our daughter Kitty and I sailed for Europe my wife insisted on going on a large ship fashionable at the time it was impossible to escape the nouveau riche he got by the third day out I could stand it no longer I had to get away I walked as far forward as possible coming to the end of the deck I stood alone looking down there were men women and children on the lower levels of the steerage the scene fascinated me a round straw hat the funnel leaning left the stairway leaning right quite suspenders crossed on the back of a man below a mass that cut into the sky completing a triangle I saw shapes related to one another a picture of shapes and underlying it a new vision that held me I raced to the main stairway of the steamer chased down into my cabin picked up my Graflex raced back again worrying whether or not the man with the straw had it shifted his position if he had the picture I saw would no longer exist the man with the straw hat had not stirred an inch the man in the cross suspenders he too stood where he had been talking no one had moved I had only one plate holder with one unexposed plate I released the shutter my heart thumping if I had captured what I wanted it would be a picture based on related shapes and deepest human feeling a step in my own evolution 19:07 was a memorable year in Paris a time of Fermin experiment and excitement Picasso was painting the Demoiselles d'Avignon Matisse's fove paintings were causing a furor the great 1907 Cezanne retrospective was transforming modern art it would be Stieglitz real introduction to the Paris evam gout that same year a very important gallery in Paris was showing seasoned watercolors and Steichen and I want to see them as we entered I saw what appeared to be pieces of blank paper with scattered blotches of color on them I asked the gentlemen in charge their cost I learned only later that he was one of the outstanding connaissez in the French art business he replied a thousand francs I answered facetiously you must mean a dozen there's nothing there but empty paper with a few splashes of color the man turned on his heels I knew I had been absurdly stupid Stieglitz might not get it but he was always drawn to the new and ready to promote it especially if it was likely to shock a bourgeois public the sculptor called death gave him that opportunity Steichen had photographed rhoda innumerable times and had photographed his sculpture Steichen was very close to Rhoda sort of a foster son he told him about the new gallery we had in New York and that we hope to soon have an exhibition of his drawings Rhoda was very pleased and promised the let's tie can select whatever he wanted this exhibit of Rhoda's drawings was one of the first introductions of modern art to America the show opened January 2nd 1908 and caused a sensation we had the road exhibition which attracted a great deal of attention favourable in on purple a great most of it was derision the critics ever filled a these drawings should never have been shown anywhere but in the Scottish studio they are most decidedly not the sort of thing to offer to public view even in a gallery it was in a very scandalous exhibition in the minds of many New Yorkers at the time not only because the drawings seemed to be very unfinished but also because they were clearly studies of nude models who had been prancing before Rodin in his studio among the visitors to the whole dance show was a young art student Georgia O'Keeffe who would one day change the course of Stieglitz life I was studying at the league and one of the boys came in and said then we want to go down to 291 and see the road I'm drawings all the teachers of the league were sending the students down there because they said it might be something and it might not be anything but we shouldn't miss it so we went down there and that was what greeted is this man coming out his hair stood up on top of his head and he looked very angry when he looked at us and said we wanted to see the Rodin drawings well he said they're in there well I went in and I looked around and I didn't see anything like anything I had been taught you look to me like just a lot of scribbles Steichen wrote from Paris have another crackerjack exhibition for you drawings by Matisse the most modern of the moderns abstract to the limit here was the work of a new man with new ideas a very anarchist in art there are some female figures that seem to condemn this man's brain to the limbo of artistic degeneration and subhuman hideousness his line its zigzag simplifications evidently derived from the Japanese is swirling and strong the New York art world was sorely in need of an irritant and Matisse certainly proved a timely one when a Paris art dealer agreed to an exhibition of Cezanne watercolors in 1911 Stiglitz was curious to see how the pieces of paper he and Steichen had laughed at for years before would look on the walls at 291 the box of frames says as was opened and lo and behold I found the first one no more nor less realistic than a photograph what had happened to me I realized then what the years at 291 had really done for me 291 was a space that ours could learn what this art was all about and they could begin to run into one another so a certain kind of social circle developed around 291 with Stieglitz and the art that he was showing at the center there wasn't any other place where people who are not doing just academic things and the things that you saw at his place move at you off into the world just like his conversation did he collected around him groups of people who were among the most creative intelligent people of their time and not just artists not just photographers and painters but critics poets musicians he brought all these people together and fed on the extraordinary interchange of ideas that occurred in these spaces it was a kind of excitement and argument that Stieglitz put into the air the shade was a place when you thought of something that would help you to take your own Road that was the only place that you could go to find it part of the enjoyment that Alfred arrived out of running the 291 was the sense of communal work with his friends and he had always dreamed of making that kind of community and to set to a great extent 291 became that kind of a place where there was a free exchange of ideas and this was a kind of ideal that really went back to his roots in his father's home because Stiglitz grew up in a home where his father who was a very successful merchant and was himself a painter his father was very generous with artists Stieglitz mother shared her husband's interests in the arts as well as his preference for Alfred their eldest son this tender portrait reflects Stieglitz deep feeling for his mother Oak Lawn the family summer home at Lake George always welcomed artists and Alfred of course then grew up in an atmosphere of respect active respect for art so that it was a natural thing for him to feel that this was something that he could carry on for visitors to 291 the cafes of Greenwich Village downtown were often the next stop at Polly's restaurant in Greenwich Village bohemian spirits provided New York's answer to a Parisian cafe here and in the Golden Swan better known as the hellhole voices and glasses were raised radical ideas in art and politics hotly debated the endless talk found its way into print and publications vital to American modernism Greenwich Village became a kind of hub a Center for a new kind of culture in New York it was in opposition to the dominant what I would call brownstone culture of Victorian America or of bourgeois New York and it was the next generation a group of men and women who thought of themselves as a generation in rebellion against their bourgeois parents and they wanted something more Vital the pass needed to be criticized the past needed in some sense to be overthrown and so a sense of rebellious Ness and indeed of revolution came along here it was cultural as well as political Stiglitz can be included among those who identified themselves as anarchists this anarchism for him meant a kind of intense individualism going his own path a kind of sense of continuous rebellion rebellion against his background rebellion against anything that is conventional Stieglitz recognized in picasso a kindred spirit in 1911 Stiglitz gave the artist his first one-man show in America at 291 New York reeled from the shock any same criticism is entirely out of the question the results suggest the most violent wards of an asylum for maniacs the craziest emanations of a disordered mind the gibbering of a lunatic the Picasso's were on sale for between twenty and forty dollars I sold one single one a drawing made when he was twelve years old another I bought myself I was ashamed for America had to return them all the whole collection could have been had for $2000 what a pity that these pictures of Picasso's evolution were not kept together in this country I suggested to the director of the Metropolitan Museum that they should be he saw nothing in Picasso and was sure that such mad pictures would never mean anything in America the Metropolitan Museum had refused to buy the Picasso's but in 1910 for Stieglitz a far more important purchase crowned his 20 years struggle for the entry of photography into an American Fine Arts Museum the Albright gallery bought 15 photographs accepting our condition that the photographs be hung on a regular basis on an equal footing with the other arts in the gallery the battle has been won although pictorialism had served to open museum doors by the time victory had come Stieglitz was convinced that it was the photography of the past once he begins to show Matisse and Cezanne and Rodan's watercolors at 291 and he realizes that there was a whole new vision that is coming into being in the visual arts he is really infused with that spirit of experimentation that spirit of defiance of convention in the other visual arts and painting that he wishes to photography to align itself with that spirit it is high time that the stupidity and sham in pictorial photography be struck a solar plexus blow claims of art won't do let the photographer make a perfect photograph and if he happens to be a lover of perfection and a seer where the resulting photograph will be straight and beautiful a true photograph camerawork reflected the change in Stieglitz vision it moved away from photography to publish more and more avant-garde art resentful photographers cancelled their subscriptions camera work was well known for publishing distinguished writing on the arts but this new modern art demanded writing as radical as its images I plan to publish a special number of camera work showing the pictorial evolution of Matisse and of Picasso but I didn't know where to find literary matter to go with the pictures one day a woman brought me some writing that had been rejected by every publisher in town the woman handed me a manuscript about Picasso this one was one who was working this one was one having something being coming out of him something had been coming out of him certainly it was something certainly it had been coming out of him certainly it was something I don't know the meaning of this but it sounds good to me what you have brought somehow fits into the volume I have in mind it was the first time anything of mine had ever been published anywhere the first real competition to the gallery of 291 came in 1913 with a great Armory Show in New York City bringing together from here and abroad the greatest collection of modern art ever seen in this country at first Stieglitz was very supportive in many ways the armory show was really a vindication of all that stiglitz had been working for for the last five years after all here was a major exhibition of mainly modern European art in this country and Stieglitz prior to that time had been the only person who had shown any interest on a really serious level of showing that work to the American public the greatest number of works were Impressionists post-impressionist fauvist and cubist 210 American works was shown but it was the European art that caused a sensation the papers carried cartoons and caricatures the artists were either fakes insane or anarchists or all three Duchamp picture nude descending a staircase became a favorite target the negative publicity through enormous crowds more than 87,000 people in New York alone patrons were paying large prices for the same European paintings that Stieglitz had returned unsold to Paris work isn't art until enough noise is made about it until someone rich comes along and buys it after the great success of the Armory Show a number of dealers began showing more and more modernist work and Stieglitz felt that he had accomplished what he had set out to do the Armory Show was not only a watershed for modern art in the u.s. it was a turning point for Alfred Stieglitz and American art the European moderns had achieved success but only a fraction of the works sold were American America's avant-garde was still unappreciated and undervalued the rebel needed a new cause and it was waiting for him he Alfred Stieglitz would lead the campaign for American art not in the name of chauvinism but because one's own children must come first American art had not been ignored at 291 between 1908 and 1914 in what were called the biggest small rooms in the world Stieglitz gave pioneer American moderns their first public recognition John Marin Max Weber Abraham wall quits our third of Marsden Hartley Alfred Maurer knowing how limited were his resources in 1909 his discerning I would select three young painters with the greatest potential to whom he would become mentor protector father friend seven years later he would discover the fourth this time the artist was a woman well it was Stiglitz as great gamblers hunch that if he could invest his hope and his support in these young Americans in O'Keefe in Hartley in Dove in Marin they were four very gifted individuals and if somehow through his efforts he thought if he could allow them to develop in their own way that they would make a lasting contribution and in the end Stieglitz was right beginning with John Marin the story of the celebrated Stieglitz circle is unique in the history of American modernism I first met John Marin in Paris in 1909 we had shown his watercolors at 291 the year before his early etchings were in the Whistle Irian manor but his new phase was free bold and distinctly Marin I said why didn't you send something like that to me when my dealers were here recently and saw this they threatened to get rid of me if I did any more wild stuff like this I remarked mr. Mara you are an American you are an artist if I had your gifts I would cien one in hell who tried to interfere with me I had no idea that within a matter of months when Marin came to New York our lives would be interwoven and the basis of a lifelong friendship would have taken root and he saw the potential in Marin to capture the energy that was to be New York and it was meirin's great gift to that generation then to look out in the city and to begin to liberate his line and find his line moving in the staccato rhythm of the modern city these buildings move me they must have life thus the whole city is alive buildings people all are alive he was a free with the medium and I free with watercolor everybody copied him at that time and stinketh began pushing Balan and taking care of Mao and so that man could be his own foolish self I can't say it any other way kept him alive Arthur doves struggle as an artist would be the most difficult of the Stieglitz circle before dove went to Paris he was an illustrator and earned as much as $15,000 a year and after dove gave up his illustration work to paint his father said well if he can afford to give up such an income he need not expect anything from me and promptly cut off any support and cut him out of his will without a sin so Doug was really without resources and he is living in Westport Connecticut he's working a chicken farm he is putting in 12-hour days heavy manual labor there's very little time to work and to pursue many of these breakthroughs doves first abstractions were unusual there's almost no explaining how or why he came to it but soon after the show of his work at the 291 gallery in 1910 he picks a very limited palette greens and browns earth tones and he begins to paint the moment that nature awakens to him and the uniqueness and the originality of that invention stunned New York today our third of is acclaimed as America's first great abstract painter Stieglitz felt it was vital to recognize the very finest artists he was a passionate speaker would go on him it would with great charisma for hours at a time trying to make the point why by the work of artists who were long dead who cannot benefit from the purchase why not help artists who are alive who need the money now in order to do more work he kept a running fund into which he put money he received from the sale of his own prints a percentage of the sale price of every work he sold from the gallery some of the money from his own independent income and used that fund to help artists in any way he could like Marin and of Marsden Hartley discovered an utterly new world at 291 I had come down from Maine with a set of paintings I told Stiglitz that I wanted to show nowhere else that the spirit of no other gallery was of any interest to me and I swore that I could live on four dollars a week well Alfred was so amazed to hear anybody be so simple is to be willing to live on four or five dollars a week he couldn't believe it that he took hardly on of course hard they got got more than that for years Hartley's ardent desire was to go to Europe Stieglitz made it happen when he meets a an exciting international group of artists he explodes he does his German officer series that have tremendous heraldic significance for the modern movement and it was like a brass band in the closet the fourth member of the Stieglitz circle would arrive to an intermediary on a dismal 1st of January 1916 I was standing in 291 when in walk Anita Pulitzer to young Columbia art student I had noticed her in the gallery many times before she was carrying a roll of drawings she told me they had been sent to her by a close friend who is now teaching art in the south with the specific request that she showed them to no one but she said they seemed to belong to you examining the first drawings charcoals I realized that I had never seen anything like it before all my gloom and tiredness vanished finally a woman on paper I told miss Pulitzer I might want to show them here and thanked her for bringing them to me somebody in the washroom up at Columbia asked me if I was Virginia O'Keeffe and I said no I was Georgia well she said someone named Virginia O'Keefe is having a show at the stiglitz gallery downtown at 291 and I knew right away that that was mine because she had he had said that he was going to show them and had been almost a year and I had thought well maybe he isn't going to show them well not didn't think too much about it but as soon as I heard he was having the show in the end said anything to me about it I went down to make a fuss surprises then a girl appeared thin in a simple black dress with a little white collar she had sort of a Mona Lisa smile who gave you permission to hang these drawings she said no one I replied still with a smile she stated very positively you will have to take them down I think you're mistaken I answered well I made the drawings I am Georgia O'Keeffe I said you have no more right to withhold these pictures than to withdraw a child from the world had you given birth to one we had lunch together I begged that when she finished her next batch of drawings or paintings she should please pack them up carefully and send them to me Express collect I would take care of them she left we corresponded Anita this morning under my door when I came from breakfast there was a letter from Stiglitz such wonderful letters sometimes he gets so much of himself into them that I can hardly stand dear Georgia before I left 291 all was darkness I stood awhile at the old back window it is more marvellous than ever the new buildings are full of tenants all the windows were aglow the plains the wonderful great big sky makes me want to breathe so deep that I'll break months later at Lake George I received a mailing tube with a six cent stamp on in the tube were watercolors incredible things when Arthur Dodd saw the O'Keefe watercolors he said Stiglitz this girl is doing naturally what many of us fellows are trying to do and failing O'Keefe has done more than paint she has invented a language being in New York again for a few days was great Anita it was Stiglitz I went up to see just had to go and either there wasn't any way out of it and I'm so glad I went while I was in New York he photographed me I was very flattered naturally for the first time in years I've had time for my own photography it's intensely direct portraits it is all eight-by-ten work all platinum prints no diffused focus just straight goods on some things the lens stopped down to 128 you know that photograph of dr. trues leg it was an impossible shoe and a good-looking leg and her face as a shadow coming to it it was a double exposure and that was accidental that he didn't do that knowing what he was doing but this leg with the shoe was like a portrait of her he seemed to see into the person but he wouldn't think of working on anyone if he didn't know something about them his portrait of the young Paul strand reveals Stieglitz regard and affection for the only photographer chosen for the 291 Stieglitz group it was Stieglitz who became then the major influence on strands development as a photographer as an artist strand this lens as you're using it makes everything look as though it is made of the same stuff grass looks like water water looks as if it has the same quality as the bark of the tree you lost all the elements that distinguish one form of nature whether stone or whatever it may be from another you have achieved a kind of simplification that looks good for the moment that is full of things which will be detrimental to the final expression of whatever you're trying to do he advised me to get rid of my soft focus lens Stiglitz gave me the kind of criticism that you could say yes that's so and you could do something about it this issue of camera work is devoted to Paul strand his work is rooted in the best tradition of photography the work is brutally direct devoid of flim-flam devoid of all trickery these photographs are the direct expression of today I was on the verge of doing the portraits which I did in 1916 I did all those things with the idea of photographing people without them being aware they were being photographed the technique used was a false lens screwed to the side of my reflex camera their portraits that have an amazing power to them also strength and dignity as well these were photographs that Stieglitz felt worse particularly powerful statements of what the new photography could be all about bowls and other abstractions where the result of my seeing at 291 the work of Picasso Braque and others I was trying to apply their strange abstract principles to photography in order to understand them this Paul strand number would be the last issue of camera work the magazine had started in 1902 with pictorial photography the advanced photography of its era it ended in 1917 with the work of Paul strand the advance photography of its time Europe had been at war since 1914 three years later America joined the Allies against Germany and Austria Steichen who loved France his home for years enlisted at once in the American Air Corps the suffering he witnessed during the war would change him forever Stieglitz and 291 were devastated by the war friends scattered as a pacifist and with happy memories of his youth in Germany he could not join in the wartime fever and the anti German hysteria this refusal made him and 291 suspect in the militant wartime atmosphere I have finally decided that it would be sheer madness to continue 291 my family and I have been badly hit by the effects of the war and prohibition I'm compelled to give up both camerawork and 291 I'm supposed to have a huge following and many friends you'd be amused if you knew the facts it was the winter of 1917 1918 a winter of coal famine the coldest winter New York had experienced in years i sat in a desolate empty little space I had nowhere else to go no working place no club no money I felt somewhat does Napoleon must have on his retreat from Moscow in this dark time it was the growing intimacy of his correspondence with O'Keefe that sustained him I didn't tell you that this afternoon I said Zoeller ripping down more shelving in the old little room and ripping down the remaining burlap the place looks as if it had been raped by the terrible Germans before she left Texas O'Keeffe wired Stieglitz starting new york tonight my heart has wheels alfred never asked O'Keeffe directly to come to New York while she was still teaching in Texas he wanted it all to be her impulse so he told her what would be available to her if she came to New York that she would have a year in which to paint and that she would have a place to live that was her own and that it would be my mother's studio which she'd already arranged with her but he didn't try to persuade her outright he said these are available to you now you decide O'Keeffe came to New York and within a month alfred was living in the studio with her two hadn't left his wife and their life together had begun dear dove the lake is our great companion haven't nearly to ourselves these last 10 days have been possibly the fullest I've had in my life of course the important thing has been O'Keefe she is much more extraordinary than even I had believed in fact I don't believe that there ever has been anything like her mind and feeling very clear spontaneous and uncannily beautiful absolutely living every pulse beat I am at last photographing again just to satisfy something within me and all who have seen the work say it is a revelation it is straight no tricks of any kind it is a series of about a hundred pictures of one person heads and ears hands torsos it is the doing of something I had in mind for very many years for a long time he had wanted to make what he came to call a composite portrait of someone a portrait that would record a person's many moods there are many different cells over their whole lifetime between 1917 and 1937 when he stopped photographing he made more than 300 portraits of her you had to collaborate or you'd be in trouble you had to sit there and you had to do what you were told to do you get so you're helpless you had a very rickety old tripod that nobody else would have bothered with and the dilapidated looking trough and he had an old umbrella and that was something that he got certain light in the shadows with when Stieglitz exhibited the O'Keefe portraits for the first time it is 1921 exhibition a hundred and forty-five prints were shown but it was the O'Keefe photographs that caused a sensation in a part by part revelation of a woman's body in the isolated presentation of a hand a breast a neck a thigh a leg stiglitz achieved the exact visual equivalent of the report of a hand or a face as it travels over the body of the beloved the exhibition made a stir it put her at once on the map everybody knew the name she became what is known as a newspaper personality mmm or diss gloriously female a great painful anesthetic climaxes all ecstasy is here many of the critics seemed almost as if they were thinking more about Stieglitz's portraits of O'Keefe in the nude than they were actually looking at O'Keefe's own paintings and O'Keeffe herself clearly felt burned by some of the critical reaction to her paintings felt that the critics were over emphasizing the sexual nature of her pictures one of the most interesting things about Stieglitz is that he seems to have one foot in the 19th century and one foot in the 20th century and that is at the same time that he believed in a rather revolutionary idea and that is the women could be outstanding artists and equal in achievement to the male artists that he supported he also was very committed to the idea that a woman was expressing a kind of sexual energy in her work because at the time Freud was just known in America and he had a huge influence on Stieglitz's thinking and thus interpreted these very innovative abstractions as the sexual expression of Georgia O'Keeffe and he began to promote her work in that way so she seems very consciously in the middle of the 1920s to have changed her art not working so much in abstraction which she felt had gotten her into some of the more Freudian interpretations but rather to focus on close-up studies of fruits and vegetables and of course it was also at this time that she began to do her highly magnified views of flowers which of course only gave the critics more fuel for their Freudian interpretations my work this year is very much on the ground there will only be two abstract things all the rest is objective as objective as I can make it the decision to get married between O'Keefe and Alfred is still a puzzle no she didn't what she didn't particularly want to be married neither of them did and it didn't make much sense to me because I've had all the scandal it was much more of a scandal than than it is Willie and his scandal at all today but at that time it was quite a scandal well bothered me I got over being bothered wasn't anything I was going to do about it so what I always say I've had of everything said about me that they could say except that I've died in the summer of 1922 my mother was dying our estate was going to pieces all about me disintegration slow but sure dying chestnut trees the poplars doomed to I poor but at work the world in a great mess just at that time one of America's young literary lights Waldo Frank wrote that he believed that the secret power in my photography was due to the power of hypnotism I had over my sitters I was amazed when I read that statement I wondered what he had to say about the street scenes and the trees and the interiors so I made up my mind to answer mr. Frank I'd finally do something I had in mind for years I'd make a series of cloud pictures to show that my photographs were not due to subject matter clouds were there for everyone free but the fact was that it was more than that and it was his sorrow his fear about his mother who was obviously dying he had to find something which was distant so that he could create some kind of emotional distance for himself he was speaking with the clouds instead of with a person or with a landscape what is of greatest importance is to hold a moment to record something so completely that those who see it will relive an equivalent of what has been expressed he also began to see that it was a way of exploring abstraction in photography when I went away he sent me some pretty sad photographs of the cards pretty dark and gloomy pretty dark and gloomy one of the fundamental suppositions of the modern is a tremendous break with the past and one of the things World War one represents is that kind of break with the historical culture of Europe after the war a wide range of American intellectuals searched for a distinctive American style there were a variety of efforts Georgia O'Keeffe called it the great American thing she said at one point in the 1920s everybody was chasing after the great American thing the great American poem the great American novel they even wanted to paint the great American picture and how she said with them jumping off and going to Europe was the great American thing ever going to happen for many years Stieglitz had pioneered a lonely battle for recognition and support of American art and American artists now that everyone had jumped on the American bandwagon he moved to assert his leadership in 1925 the exhibition seven Americans brought his artists together for the first time it was a landmark event for modern American art and a dazzling triumph for the Stieglitz circle these seven Americans are explorers their creative self-discovery means nothing less than the discovery of America's independent role in the history of art the enthusiastic response to the show confirmed for Stieglitz that the time had come to open a new space for Stieglitz the intimate gallery was a new pulpit it is the American artist by expressing his individual self who give modern expression to the American soul that notion of a great American thing seems to me a very powerful way to think about what artists modern artists in the 1920s were doing whether they were the Stieglitz circle or the precision estate the regionalists they all had a similar goal even though they approached it through very different means Stieglitz was far from pleased when his vision for American art was challenged by others especially the precision astute all him the Machine agents they were fascinated by Manhattan they were fascinated by the elevated railroad the bridges that went over the rivers the skyscraper city mode era delay in New York City and it lay very specifically in the new industrial and high-rise structures in the new technologies that were proliferating at the time amongst those artists we include people like Joseph Stella and his Brooklyn Bridge paintings or his paintings of Broadway Charles DeMuth his picture I saw the figure five in gold as a magnificent precision Asst view of a rushing fire engine going down the street of Manhattan Charles Sheeler did a whole series of photographs and paintings based on the Ford Motor plant they also were interested in what might have been known in Stieglitz's Circle is sort of vulgar America product America brand name America a young Stuart Davis paints to brand name products the Machine ages thought of Stieglitz as a little old-fashioned and his point of view in his love for spiritual content and emotional and expressive character dart from Stieglitz point of view the Machine ages were indulging in a love affair with base capitalists and materialist America what he really wanted to do was to raise the level of spiritual life in America above what he saw as crass materialism by refining the sensibilities of the American public through the visual arts Stieglitz from the very beginning saw his himself in kind of missionary sense he became a missionary for a new art a new America he promoted a movement that which he was at the head of and to an extraordinary degree his own history of himself became the history of modernism and what we now have to look at a little more critically is his ability to articulate his own view as the view of what the modern in America was about and it was exclusionary even as it promoted what was unquestionably work of considerable merit he was autocratic he was highly selective he was not very democratic and he really always maintained notion that he was fighting for the right cause against a kind of dull and shallow public that couldn't really understand what he was saying and he had devotees around him who were caught up in his evangelical fervor increasingly they began to write about him as a kind of Messiah a prophet a figure who had you know led the people out of the wilderness and into a new religion a religion of culture and art and he fueled that image of himself he tended to speak prophetically even to speak in parables perhaps in the mode of an Old Testament prophet clearly he was driven by some idea of Fame and his manner did have all the marks of grandiosity grandiosity he felt he was capable of speaking the truth that's a major conviction though he viewed himself as a teacher he was never able to take pride in his students when they left him having absorbed his lessons they had to grow away from him and he never recognized that he felt always as though he was being betrayed and this was this was great drama because he had given them everything that he could and then they left him and they and right and left and they said terrible things about him he was very possessive without knowing it when those people might feel like they had matured somewhat and had come to a position where they assumed that they were more on an equal footing with Stieglitz he had a difficult time often accepting that and so throughout his life he had a number of falling outs with people who had been very close friends Steichen and Stieglitz quarreled and didn't speak from for many years while Stieglitz remained always an elitist Steichen increasingly became a populist he saw himself as a photographer who could do work of a standard that could satisfy a Stieglitz but that could reach an enormous ly broad popular audience he was the highest-paid photographer in the world but Stieglitz felt that Steichen had sold out and Stieglitz could never forgive stockin for having done so now Stieglitz believed in art for art's sake of course Stieglitz did not have to earn a living and Steichen always had to earn a living so Stieglitz could afford to believe an art for art's sake these varied aspects of the Stieglitz persona are all components of a very complex character where the dark plays an integral role just as it does in his great photographs but there was a lighter side as well New York is madder than ever the pace is ever-increasing but Georgia and I somehow don't seem to be of new york nor of any where we live high up in the shelton hotel the wind howls and shakes the huge steel frame we feel as if we were out at mid-ocean it's a wonderful place when we lived up high in the city photographed out the window and they were very good photographs what did he see I don't do what did you see you saw the city on this and the city building sometimes it would be a building that was going up and it would change from day to day or week to week as you will and sometimes it would be buildings that were nearby and there was a building far off that came in look at them came into the sky quite often and when we lived up on the 30th floor and looked out we'd be up on the level with the tops of the buildings our work was so different but I was very interested in what he didn't he was interested in what I did when Georgia O'Keeffe started to paint the skyscraper she even went so far as to write a letter to the critic Waldo Frank and said I want to be vulgar so vulgar that people won't like my work anymore and interestingly when she came to New Mexico she began to discover the forms of New Mexico and at that point she stops painting the skyscraper once she finds her New Mexico it's as if she's found her America you I'm having a wonderful time you know I never feel at home in the East like I do out here one perfect day after another I wired Marin to come out he's having a great time too the modernists were seeking to create a kind of painting that resonated with American qualities and American scenes subjects that only an American would paint Marsden Hartley was the first to come Paul strand came later with his wife Rebecca strand and that Georgia O'Keeffe came in 1929 Stieglitz heart condition combined with Santa Fe's high altitude forbade his coming to New Mexico since childhood his summers were always spent at the family's Lake George property there he found renewal and familiar beloved subjects for his camera you always thought I wouldn't come back and that was ridiculous I never thought of not going back but you couldn't get him to believe it he made everybody miserable talking about it I think he hated it I wasn't going to stay out here because I lived in the city with him what do you think I didn't go back to look at the Woolworth Building or anything Stieglitz disciples sought and found a new gallery space for him the funds for an American place were raised for Stieglitz by Paul strand and 25 year-old Dorothy Norman whose devotion to the new gallery was matched only by her devotion to Stieglitz himself Norman's complex role as Stieglitz scribe and gallery assistant would result in books and publications that contributed heavily to Stieglitz legend and for a while her role as muse and model would cause tensions in his marriage to O'Keefe the gallery opens shortly after the 1929 stock market crash but in spite of the bleak market for art during the Depression an American place meant that Stieglitz could see through the work begun at 291 that Maren dove and O'Keefe could be free to continue to experiment and develop the fact that the only two photographers Stieglitz chose to introduce there with the young Ansel Adams and Elliot Porter testifies to the old man's undimmed eye for talent I got no home I'm just a roaming around just a wandering worker I go from town to town and the police make it hard wherever I may go and I ain't got no home in this world in him the Great Depression was one of those truly cataclysmic events in American history no one could be unaffected by this and there was a great effort to document the depression by the government the Farm Security Administration sent out some of the greatest photographers of our time extraordinary photographs showing what the conditions were in America the whole intellectual world moved left writers and artists wanted their art have something to say and hopefully even do with the crisis that the society was going through Stiglitz although a person of the left certainly concerned by all of this couldn't find a way to relate to all of this and I'm not sure what the reason was but one probably has to do with his anarchist spirit his intense individualism that that was somehow out of place with the collectivist spirit that was emerging in the 30s Stieglitz's break with Paul strand was of a very political nature with the coming of the Great Depression strand who after all had helped to establish an American place turned away when he felt that Stieglitz was using an American place as an ivory tower and Stran moved more towards art as a political tool an idea that Stiglitz abhorred and strand felt that Stieglitz had become irrelevant Steve woods increasingly comes to seem to younger photographers especially those in the documentary mode who came through the FSA as excessively in love with himself excessively egotistical excessively arty that may have had something to do with Stieglitz perhaps increasing sense that the artist has really no alternative but to withdraw the town of Stieglitz his work changed dramatically in the 1930s Stieglitz his work becomes cooler in many ways it becomes sharper and crisper but any of his pictures from the 1930s have a very almost elegiac quality to them they're beautiful monumental images but there's something almost sad and lonely about many of the photographs I feel my age not with sadness nor fear but rather with a growing sense that I'm inadequate to the responsibilities that I've undertaken I dare count on no one and must save my energy so that I can at least follow through what I have begun Stieglitz lay down his camera in 1937 his late photographs at Lake George among his finest are equivalents of his love for this place scene of his happiest hours you to the very end of his life he died in 1946 he was still running galleries he was still showing his artists he was still making sure that there was criticism written about them he was making sure they were being sold to the best museums in the country right to the end always seeing that within his soul was a rebel that refused to die Stieglitz stood for the freedom of the artist and he did have a fierce kind of determination a heroic determination to be free to be free to stand at a place where it was possible to speak the truth as you see it in your particular medium and for that I earned a major place in the history of culture in the United States in the world in the 20th century to learn more about Alfred Stieglitz visit PBS online at pbs.org you you you ah Hey exclusive corporate sponsorship provided by American Century Investments support for American masters is also provided by the park foundation dedicated to education and quality television and by the National Endowment for the Humanities the National Endowment for the Arts the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Rosalind P Walter additional funding was made possible by and contributions to your PBS stations from viewers like you thank you this is PBS

Channel: Milan Mate

Views: 415,627

Rating: 4.9073868 out of 5

Keywords: Alfred, Stieglitz, Fotograf, Foto, Kunst, Kunstform, Milanmate

Id: PNn6H4SEgQc

Length: 87min 57sec (5277 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 30 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/jcl4]

Thank you!

[u/Nondo]

Thanks for the video. I enjoyed the part about Picasso at 291.

In 1911 Alfred Stieglitz gave Pablo Picasso his first one-man show in America at Gallery 291. In Stieglitz's own words:

"The Picasso's were on sale from between $20 and $40. I sold one single one. A drawing made when he was 12 years old. Another I bought myself.

I was ashamed for America to return them all. The whole collection could have been had for $2,000.00. What a pity that these pictures of Picasso's evolution were not kept together in this country. I suggested to the Director of the Metropolitan Museum that they should be. He saw nothing in Picasso and was sure that such mad pictures would never mean anything in America."

[u/hias]

Thank you very much. That was a pleasure to watch.

[u/diamened]

Gorgeous. Thank you.

[u/edzstudios]

Wonderful - the American Masters pieces are great. Loved their one on Avedon too.