#ALFRED STEELE SERIES#

Starting in 1922, Stieglitz made his first nearly abstract photographs with a series of cloud studies he called Equivalents, arguing that photography could assume the same nonrepresentational qualities as music. In his portraits of the many artists in his circle he probed new psychological depths, and an extended, “composite” portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe marked a new form of photographic description. Upon his return to New York, he turned his camera to the streets and buildings of that rapidly changing city, printing his images as photogravures in order to emphasize the atmospheric effects and lend them a softening tone.īeginning around 1910, Stieglitz shifted away from the painterly approach of the Pictorialists and toward a more direct, straightforward depiction, which was echoed in his use of photographic papers such as platinum, palladium, and later, gelatin silver prints. Studying in Europe, he made picturesque scenes with great technical skill, winning prizes for his large carbon prints. Stieglitz’s early photographs and writings served as arguments for photography’s acceptance as an art form on par with painting. Later, he embraced straight photography, linking its potential for modern expression with that of avant-garde painting and sculpture. A founder of the Photo-Secession, a Pictorialist group of photographers, he elevated the discourse and practice of photography, forming key connections between American and European movements.

Through his own photographic work over the course of a half century, the journals he edited and published, and the exhibitions he mounted at his influential New York galleries, Alfred Stieglitz played a crucial role in establishing photography as an integral part of modern art in America.

Alfred steele