Alfred Stieglitz: known and unknown works - Focus on America - Biography

Alfred Stieglitz: born in Hoboken, N.J., in 1864, lived through some of the most-profound changes the U.S. ever experienced: two world wars, the Great Depression, the transformation of New York into a modern metropolis, and the growth of the country from a rural, agricultural nation into an industrial superpower. While the world was changing around him, Stieglitz became a guiding force in shaping American culture through his work as a photographer and art impresario.

When Stieglitz started taking photographs in the 1880s, the medium was still in its infancy, seen as something to be utilized for recording and descriptive purposes. However, he regarded the camera as a tool, just as a paintbrush is, and was determined to put photography on the same level as other art forms, such as painting and sculpture.

He championed the romanticized images of pictorialism, and often spent hours waiting for just the right atmosphere to develop. Later, the strong geometric shapes of modern painting and flattened images of Japanese printmaking influenced his work, but he decided that photography should not be like painting and embraced sharply focused "straight" photography. Still later, he sought to make photographs that were the pictorial equivalents of emotional responses, similar to music.

In addition to his career in photography, Stieglitz was a magazine editor, gallery owner, and promoter of European and American modernist art. His pioneering magazine, Camera Work, was published from 1903 to 1907, and he also served as editor of Camera Notes. Stieglitz successively ran three New York galleries, through which he organized the first exhibitions in the U.S. of works by Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Pablo Picas so, and Paul Cezanne, among others. He was one of the first prominent supporters of American modernist artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and Charles DeMuth. Stieglitz died in 1946.

New insights into his work are being offered in an exhibition, "Alfred Stieglitz: Known and Unknown," at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Tex., through Jan. 5, 2003. It emphasizes lesser-known images and places them in context with some of his most-celebrated photographs.

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