Who Promoted Art Photography in the Early Days of Photography Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz – pioneer of modern photography
Alfred Stieglitz (1864 – 1946) was an advocate for the Modernist movement in the arts, and, arguably, the most important photographer of his time. A photographer, publisher, writer and gallery possessor, he played a primal role in the promotion and exploration of photography as an art form.
"Photography fascinated me, get-go as a toy, then as a passion, and so every bit an obsession."
Alfred Stieglitz
Stieglitz was a student in Federal republic of germany when he bought his first photographic camera, an 8 × 10 plate film camera that required a tripod. Despite its majority, Stieglitz travelled throughout Europe, taking photographs of landscapes and labourers in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. In 1892, Stieglitz bought his first hand-held photographic camera, a Folmer and Schwing iv × five plate film camera, which he used to take two of his best known images, Wintertime, Fifth Avenue and The Concluding.
Stieglitz collected books on photography and photographers in Europe and the Usa and wrote articles on the technical and aesthetic aspects of photography. Through his self-study, Stieglitz developed and refined his vision of photography equally an fine art course.
Photo-Secession and Camera Work
In 1902, Stieglitz founded Photo-Secession, a radical and controversial motility that was influential in promoting photography as a art. For this group, photography was viewed not only equally a documenting tool, but every bit a new way of expression and cosmos, whereby an image could exist manipulated to accomplish a subjective vision.
The ideas of Photograph-Secession, and the institution of photography as a fine art, were promoted through Stieglitz's Camera Work, a quarterly photographic journal published from 1903 to 1917. The first issue was printed in December 1902, and like all of the subsequent issues it independent beautiful hand-pulled photogravures (a process that uses gelatin to transfer the image from a black and white negative to a copper printing plate), critical writings on photography, and commentaries on photographers and exhibitions.
In the introduction to the starting time issue, Stieglitz wrote:
"Only examples of such works as gives evidence of individuality and artistic worth, regardless of schoolhouse, or contains some infrequent feature of technical merit, or such as exemplifies some treatment worthy of consideration, will find recognition in these pages. Nevertheless, the Pictorial will be the dominating feature of the magazine."
In 1905 Stieglitz opened the "little galleries of the Photograph-Secession" in New York at 291 Fifth Avenue, which later became known every bit gallery '291'. The effect of the First World State of war and the changes in the New York arts scene meant that in 1917 Stieglitz could no longer beget to publish Camera Work or to run the gallery.
Influenced past the big abstract drawings of the American artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 – 1986) and the work of American photographer Paul Strand (1890 – 1976), Stieglitz adopted an arguably more Modernist approach in the 1920s and 1930s. He started to make small gelatin-silver prints of exquisite precision and abrupt tonal dissimilarity and to explore the artistic and spiritual potential of his everyday surroundings.
Betwixt 1925 and 1934, Stieglitz took a serial of photographs of clouds. The Equivalents, as he came to call them, are some of the first intentionally abstract photographic works of art and take been hailed as his most important contribution to photography.
Stieglitz'southward aim was not to dribble the essence of clouds simply to transform them into an abstract linguistic communication of form expressive of his feelings. By removing any reference points and allowing the photographs to be viewed in whatever orientation, Stieglitz "was destabilising your [the viewer's] relationship with nature in order to take you lot call back less about nature, not to deny that information technology'due south a photograph of a cloud, but to think more about the feeling that the cloud formation evokes." (Sarah Greenough, 1995)
These images had a huge impact at the time, especially considering photography had only been recognised as a singled-out art course for nigh xv years, and that within this short fourth dimension no tradition of abstraction had existed.
Georgia O'Keeffe
In 1916 Stieglitz start saw the work of the American artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 – 1986) and was impressed by the expressive power of her large abstract drawings.
The following yr he hosted her start solo exhibition at his gallery '291' in New York. He besides started to photograph O'Keeffe, posing her in front of her work and finding ways to fuse her body with the compositions. This was the showtime of an extraordinary collaboration that lasted over twenty years and resulted in over 300 photographs. Stieglitz and O'Keeffe'due south creative dialogue extended to a profound influence on each other'south work. They became lovers and married in 1924.
Stieglitz saw his photographs of O'Keeffe as a composite portrait. Seen together, they explore themes of multiplicity, fragmentation, fourth dimension and change, besides as O'Keeffe's personality, beauty and creativity. Nosotros might also read the portraits as a record of Stieglitz and O'Keeffe's beloved affair and of their remarkable creative synergy.
The portraits of O'Keeffe shown here were taken between 1918 and 1937. The early, sensuous images were taken in the studio and printed on platinum and palladium paper, giving a fine tonal range. After, there is a move away from symbolically charged images to an increasingly frank tape of an individual.
Source: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/alfred-stieglitz-pioneer-of-modern-photography
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