CHATSWORTH PTA’S ART APPRECIATION, FALL 2010

ALFRED STIEGLITZ, (1864-1946)

(Pronounced STEE-glitz)

The following outline has been prepared as a teaching guide for Art Appreciation Parent Volunteers with the intention of providing a brief account of Stieglitz’s work and influence. Depending on the grade being introduced to this artist, the Parent Volunteers may tailor the information appropriately.

Note about Stieglitz posters: The parenthetical references to numbered photos below have been inserted to let you know when to show the corresponding posters to the class. On back of the posters you will find specific information about the photos and how to look at them with the children.

IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT ALFRED STIEGLITZ

  1. Stieglitz had a pioneering spirit and high expectations of himself in terms of his own talent and the influence he wished to have on the art world.
  2. As a photographer, Stieglitz produced more than 2,500 mounted photographs and transformed the conception of photography as a medium.
  3. He helped establish photography as an art form unto itself capable of profound self-expression, artistry and even abstraction.
  4. As a gallery owner and arts promoter in New York City, he changed the course of Modern Art in the United States and prepared people for a modern approach to art.
  5. He is considered one of “the most important figures in the history of visual arts in America…as a great photographer…discoverer and promoter of photographers and…artists in other media...[as] publisher, patron and collector he had a greater impact on American art that any other person has had” (Richard Whelan, author, Steiglitz scholar)

DEVELOPMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

  • The word photography derives from the Greek words phōs (genitive: phōtós) light, and gráphein, to write. The word was coined by Sir John Herschel in 1839.
  • Photography is the result of combining several different theories and technical discoveries which were made over 2,500 years culminating in the efforts of several European inventors of the early 19th Century.
  • Chemicals (silver nitrate, silver chloride) found to be sensitive to light were discovered in the 13th and 16th centuries and were eventually used in photography.
  • Chemical photography as a usable process goes back to the 1820s.
  • Photography invented in the 19th century (by way of the camera) was thought to capture more detail and information than traditional mediums, such as painting and sculpting and satisfied a growing orientation towards realism and factualism.
  • Most cameras were very large and it could take up to 8 hours of exposure to make one photograph. Therefore most photography was done indoors in the photographer’s office or studio consisting of portraits of individuals or family groupings.
  • Many individuals contributed to the technical development of photography throughout the nineteenth century including:
  • French photographer Nidephore Niépce made the first permanent photoetching images in 1822 and the first permanent photograph from nature with a camera obscura in 1826; the process for one image took 8 hours.
  • Louis Daguerre and Niepce experimented with silver compounds to create a faster process. Daguerre developed the daquerreotype in 1837 and in 1839 he took the first ever photo of a person when, while taking a daguerreotype of a Paris street, a pedestrian stopped for a shoe shine, long enough to be captured by the long exposure (several minutes). He continued to work to reduce exposure time and develop photography.
  • American photographer Mathew Brady developed the "Brady stand", a photo model's armrest table, meant to keep portrait models more still during long exposure times
  • British inventor William Henry Fox Talbot developed the calotype process, the precursor to most photographic processes of the 19th and 20th centuries. Talbot eventually refined his process so that portraits were made readily available to the masses.
  • Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell created the first permanent color photo in 1861.

OVERVIEW OF STIEGLITZ’S LIFE AND WORK

Early Years (1864-1890):

  • Alfred Stieglitz was the first born son of German-Jewish immigrants living in Hoboken, New Jersey. His family was oriented towards serious education and European culture.
  • He was sent to prestigious schools in New York.
  • At age 17 his family moved to Germany so that Alfred could finish his education in Germany’s rigorous schools, travel and experience Europe’s cultural heritage.
  • At age 18, he began studying mechanical engineering in Berlin, and became interested in the developing field of photography.
  • Stieglitz took advantage of his new contacts in the scientific and artistic world and Berlin’s inspiring environment by seeking out intellectual discussions and observing the emergence of the contemporary art of the day.

[Photos 1 and 2]

  • From 1884 to 1890 Alfred remained in Germany photographing, collecting books about photography, writing articles and publishing about photography and art, winning his first European photography prizes at age 23/24.
  • His reputation as a photographer began to spread as several German and British photographic magazines began publishing his work.
  • He was interested in the promotion of the photograph to the status of an art object which was the goal of a movement known as Pictorialism (1889-1914).
  • Pictorialism was a belief
  • That camera images should engage feelings and senses and naturalism.
  • That photographs should be concerned with self-expression and beauty rather than only fact.
  • That photographs should be regarded as equal to painting and sculpture and treated accordingly by the artistic establishment.

Establishing Self as Artist and Influential Promoter of Photography (1890-1901)

  • Stieglitz returned to New York in 1890 (age 26) already considering himself an artist with an important point of view.
  • With his father’s help Alfred started a photography business. He befriended important artists and publishers in the American world of photography.
  • In 1892 he bought his first hand-held camera which liberated him from carrying around his heavy camera which required a tripod. This allowed him increased freedom of movement resulting in images of greater spontaneity and naturalism. This approach was a break with the staged, posed and rehearsed images produced by studio photographers.
  • Alfred wrote important articles for photography magazines promoting naturalistic and artistic photography
  • He won many awards for his photographs at exhibitions in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

[Photo 3]

  • Stieglitz married in 1893 and went to Europe on his honeymoon. On this trip he produced some of his early famous images and met likeminded influential photographers in Paris and London.
  • Upon his return to New York, Alfred with great vision and enthusiasm continued to promote artistic photography as the vice-president and editor-in-chief of the newly formed Camera Club of New York.
  • Stieglitz guided the Camera Club’s publication “Camera Notes“ to become the finest photographic magazine in the world championing the belief in photography as an art form.
  • He continued to exhibit his own work in the USA and Europe with great success.
  • In 1898 a group of photographers in Munich, Germany held an exhibition of their work in conjunction with a show of graphic prints by forward thinking artists including Edvard Munch and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec who called themselves Secessionists as part of a greater European modern art movement. This movement would be very influential for Stieglitz who wished to mount a similar exhibition in New York.
  • In 1901, after disagreements with members of the Camera Club and frustration over their old ways of thinking about artistic photography Stieglitz resigned as editor of Camera News.

Gallery Owner, Exhibitor and Publisher (1902-1917)

  • In 1902 Stieglitz organized a photographic exhibition at the National Arts Club called the Photo-Secession (similar to the 1898 exhibition in Munich) which declared secession (meaning a formal withdrawal) from general artistic restrictions of the era and the oversight of the Camera Club. For the first time, the exhibition was judged solely by photographers and was a huge success.
  • Stieglitz worked tirelessly and began to publish a new journal called “Camera Work” in 1903 containing beautiful photogravures, critical writings on photography and reviews and commentaries on photographers and exhibitions.
  • Stieglitz opened “The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession” in 1905 on 5th Ave in NY showing photographs and eventually in 1907 the drawings and watercolors of Pamela Coleman Smith whose modern approach to art appealed to Stieglitz. The exhibition was a huge success thus starting Stieglitz’s career as a revolutionary promoter of modern art.

[Photo 4]

  • On the way to Europe in 1907, Stieglitz took his signature image “The Steerage” which is considered one of the most important photographs of the 20th century showing passengers on the bow of a ship.
  • In 1908 the gallery was renamed “291”. Exhibitions were held of works by forward-thinking modernist photographers and painters helping to prepare audiences for the famous New York Armory Show in 1913 which introduced modern art to a huge number of people and forever reoriented public opinion and taste. Stieglitz was an honorary vice president of the Armory Show.

O’Keeffe, Modern Art, Continued Exhibitions (1918-1937)

[Photos 5 and 6]

  • The painter Georgia O’Keeffe and Stieglitz met in 1916 when he mounted an exhibition of her work at 291. Soon after, he began photographing her, ultimately creating 350 mounted prints portraying a wide range of moods and parts of her body especially her hands.

[Photos 7 and 8]

  • This collection is one of the most dynamic and intimate records of a single, real individual in the history of art.
  • Georgia O’Keeffe and Stieglitz married in 1924.

[Photo 9]

  • Influenced by modernist painters such as Charles Sheeler, Georgia O’Keeffe, Picasso, Matisse and photographer Paul Strand, Stieglitz began to explore more abstract images in his photography such as series of clouds. The images are recognized as the first intentionally abstract photographs and are known as “Equivalents.”

[Photos 10 and 11]

  • He continued to mount exhibitions in New York showing works by emerging modern artists from 1925-1937 including one of the first exhibition of photos by Ansel Adams in New York City.

[Photos 12 and 13]

  • His own work continued to gain notoriety and respect. A major exhibition of his work was held at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
  • After several bouts of exhaustion and a total of six coronary or angina attacks, Stieglitz suffered a fatal stroke in 1946.
  • O’Keeffe personally oversaw the task of assembling his enormous art collection including
  • 3,000 of his own photographs
  • 850 works of art by artists he had promoted
  • 580 prints by other photographers
  • 50,000 pieces of correspondence
  • O’Keeffe ultimately donated 1,642 Stieglitz’s photographs to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the largest and most complete collection of his work in the world.

FAMOUS QUOTES BY STIEGLITZ

  • “I was born in Hoboken. I am an American. Photography is my passion. The search for Truth my obsession.”
  • “I have always been a great believer in today. Most people live either in the past or in the future so that they really never live at all. So many people are busy worrying about the future of art or society; they have not time to preserve what is. Utopia is in the moment. Not in some future time, some other place but in the here and now, or else it is nowhere.”
  • “The goal of art was the vital expression of self.”
  • “Wherever there is light, one can photograph”
  • “The arts equally have distinct departments, and unless photography has its own possibilities of expression, separate from those of the other arts, it is merely a process, not an art.”

EXHIBITS:

“Alfred Stieglitz New York” is currently running through January 10, 2011 at the Seaport Museum New York.

“Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand“ will run at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from November 10, 2010 through April 10, 2011 -- Galleries for Drawings, Prints, and Photographs, 2nd floor.

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