Alfred Stieglitz(1864 — 1946)
Alfred Stieglitz
États-Unis
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Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) was an American photographer and gallery owner who played a fundamental role in establishing photography as a fine art in its own right. He founded Gallery 291 in New York and edited influential journals such as Camera Notes and Camera Work.
Frequently asked questions
Famous Quotes
« Photography is my passion, the search for truth my obsession. »
« In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality. »
Key Facts
- 1864: Born in Hoboken, New Jersey
- 1902: Founded the Photo-Secession movement to promote artistic photography
- 1903–1917: Edited Camera Work magazine, an international benchmark for art photography
- 1905–1917: Directed Gallery 291 in New York, a showcase for American and European modern art
- 1946: Died in New York, leaving a body of work of more than 3,000 photographs
Works & Achievements
Photograph taken during a snowstorm in New York, depicting horse-drawn carriages on a snow-covered street. It is considered one of the first works to establish photography as an art form in the tradition of realist painting.
An avant-garde photography publication founded and edited by Stieglitz, renowned for the exceptional quality of its photogravures. It brought the work of the greatest photographers and modern artists to an international audience of connoisseurs.
A photograph of poor passengers on the deck of a transatlantic ocean liner, often cited as the first iconic image of American modernist photography. Stieglitz prioritizes pure formal composition over any anecdotal narrative.
More than three hundred photographs of his companion and future wife, forming a psychological and sensual portrait of a woman artist spanning two decades. This series is considered one of the most ambitious photographic portraits in the history of art.
A series of several hundred photographs of cloud formations taken at Lake George. Stieglitz sought to demonstrate that photography could express pure inner states, independent of any recognizable subject — an approach bordering on abstraction.
At gallery 291, Stieglitz organized the first American exhibitions of Rodin, Matisse, Picasso, Cézanne, and Braque. This exhibition program stands as a collective intellectual achievement that permanently transformed American artistic life.
Anecdotes
In January 1893, Alfred Stieglitz waited more than three hours in a snowstorm on Fifth Avenue in New York, his feet frozen, to capture the perfect shot that would become 'Winter – Fifth Avenue'. This image, taken with a cumbersome camera amid gusting winds, was hailed as a work of art in its own right and helped legitimize photography as equal in stature to painting.
Gallery 291, opened in 1905 at 291 Fifth Avenue, was the first gallery in the United States to exhibit works by Picasso, Matisse, and Cézanne, even before these artists were widely recognized in Europe. Stieglitz combined photographs and avant-garde paintings under one roof, asserting that both mediums deserved equal artistic consideration.
In 1907, during a transatlantic voyage to Europe, Stieglitz photographed 'The Steerage', an image depicting third-class passengers on the lower deck of the ocean liner. He regarded it as his most important work: he saw in it a pure formal composition, free of any sentimentality, and a harbinger of modernist photography.
Stieglitz printed his journal Camera Work (1903–1917) on luxury Japanese paper with high-precision photogravures, in a limited edition of approximately 1,000 copies. Refusing all commercial advertising, he personally funded the publication for fourteen years, making it as much an art object as a photographic manifesto.
In 1916, Stieglitz received a roll of drawings sent by an unknown young artist, Georgia O'Keeffe. He was so impressed that he immediately put them on display without notifying her. When she arrived at his gallery, furious, a long artistic and intellectual collaboration began; they married in 1924 and remained bound together until his death in 1946.
Primary Sources
Camera Work will be devoted to photographic art, its progress and the development of the artists who give it its value. It will not be the organ of a society or club, but will be published solely in the interest of art.
Your work is the most important thing I have seen in many years — the sharpest thinking, the most direct vision. It is absolutely pure. It is the quintessence of what Camera Work has striven to achieve.
I saw shapes related to one another. A picture of shapes and, beneath them, a new vision that held me: people, round hats, an iron footbridge, masts, white ropes, a stairway, conical straw hats... Everything connected to me as never before.
I wanted to photograph clouds to find out if I had learned anything in forty years of photography... I wanted to know if what I had learned about light and shadow, space and time, had meaning.
Key Places
The birthplace of Alfred Stieglitz in 1864. His family, of German origin, had settled there in comfortable prosperity, allowing him to receive a solid education before his departure for Germany.
Stieglitz studied engineering and then photography under Hermann Wilhelm Vogel at the Technische Hochschule from 1881 onward. It was here that he discovered his artistic vocation and gained rigorous technical training.
Founded in 1905 at 291 Fifth Avenue, this gallery became the nerve center of modern art in the United States. Stieglitz exhibited photographs and European avant-garde works there for twelve years, making it a unique hub of intellectual debate.
The Stieglitz family's summer retreat since his childhood. As an adult, he returned every summer to photograph nature, sky, and clouds, giving rise to his celebrated *Equivalents* series in the 1920s.
The last gallery founded by Stieglitz, in 1925, devoted exclusively to modern American artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe and John Marin. He worked there until shortly before his death in 1946.
