Dead Photographer of the Moment: Alfred Stieglitz

The world is full of photographers, and it's not unusual to be asked, "Have you heard of this-or-that photographer?" and the answer is, many times, "No." There are lots of great photographers out there, and it's always a wonderful surprise to discover someone whose work you really like, but whose name you've never heard before.

In the quest to get your work out there, living photographers have one great advantage, namely that we're still around to promote ourselves. Build that Website, use paid search advertising. Tweet away!

But what of those who've made the trip to the ultimate darkroom? Some have work that that's made it onto gallery walls, or into the history of photography books. But there are a lot of great photographers — some famous and many not — who have passed away, but whose work deserves to be remembered, studied, and showcased.

Dead Photographer of the Moment is designed to do exactly that: Bring to our readers' attention the life and work of an interesting photographer whose picture-taking days are over. In the coming months, we'll profile the work of photographers of note, both the famous and the not-so-famous, whose work we think merits the attention of all photographers.

In this installment, we turn our attention to Alfred Stieglitz (1864 - 1946), who NYI Associate Dean Jerry Rice quite properly calls "the father of American photography." As you read Jerry's appreciation of this great photographer, take time to look at the images that are linked to the article, but also give consideration to the fact that Stieglitz was also a champion of modern art in other forms as well. If there's a lesson to draw from our examination of Stieglitz's life, it may well be the connection between photography and the other arts and his keen appreciation of other art forms. For example, Stieglitz's wife, the American painter Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 - 1986), executed a number of paintings of flowers that drew attention to the shapes they share with certain parts of the human body, a topic of great interest in floral photographs of the late Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989) a photographer who aroused great controversy in his relatively brief career.

Alfred Stieglitz: The Father of Modern American Photography

by NYI Associate Dean Jerry Rice

Photography, generally, was largely a product of the mid 19th century — the work of such pioneers as L.J.M. Daguerre. Niepce Nicephore, William Henry Fox Talbot, and others. There were earlier efforts even going back as far as Leonardo Da Vinci, but the Victorian Era was the period when the greatest initial effort was made. Obviously, there were many more developments (and improvements) in the 20th century, too.

It is important, I think, to find a bridge between the two centuries, someone, perhaps, who witnessed much of the early progress in photography but also was very much on hand during the later photographic evolution. No one fitted the role better than Alfred Stieglitz, the father of modern American photography.

Stieglitz was born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1864 — just 25 years after Daguerre and the other pioneers in photography were startling the world with their discoveries and inventions. Ten years before Stieglitz was born the first photojournalist, Roger Fenton, documented the Crimean War. And at the time of Stieglitz's birth in 1864 Alexander Gardner, Timothy O'Sullivan, Mathew Brady, and David Bachrach were photographing the War Between the States. History in the making!

In the prime of his life Alfred Stieglitz proudly proclaimed that he was an American photographer, but his formative years (when he mastered photography) were spent mostly in Europe, particularly in Germany. There he studied optical theory, photographic chemistry, and related subjects intensively in addition to entering his photographs in juried competitions while perfecting his craft. When he returned to America he had already determined to promote photography as a fine art — on a par with the traditional arts.

It is important to remember that Alfred Stieglitz had no strong interest in becoming a professional photographer. He was the quintessential serious amateur like so many of us, too. That does not in any way equate him with the dilettante or the Sunday snapshooter. His standards were substantially higher than those of many professionals, and his constant efforts to promote photography as a fine art ultimately helped to assure its eminent position.

Stieglitz not only created his own photographic masterpieces — The Steerage, The Hand of Man, portraits of his wife (the painter Georgia O'Keefe), Paula in Berlin, pictures of street life in America and Europe, etc. — but he also formed salons of photography, supportive groups such as the Photo-Secession, edited magazines and wrote for them (Camera Notes, Camera Work). He also lent time and money in support of the other arts — painting, sculpture, et al — and promoted such painters as O'Keefe, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley , John Marin, and others. And Alfred Stieglitz was a prime mover in the introduction of modern European artists to America, such great names as Picasso, Legere, Matisse, Cezanne, Duchamp.

Stieglitz's personal work can be viewed at the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, the Yale University collection in New Haven, CT, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY.

Alfred Stieglitz, the father of modern American photography, died in New York in 1946.