Alfred Stieglitz

By Shepherd Rempel
Childhood
• Stieglitz was born in Hoboken, New jersey.
• His father was a lieutenant in the Union Army
and worked as a wool merchant. He had five
siblings.
• He went to the City College of New York.
• 20-year-old Stieglitz remained in Germany and
collected books on photography and
photographers in Europe and the U.S.

2
Early interest in photography

• collected books on • He took photographs of

photography and landscapes and workers in
photographers in Europe and the countryside.
the U.S.
• In 1887, he wrote his very
• He bought his first camera, first article, "A Word or Two
an 8 × 10 plate film camera, about Amateur Photography
and traveled through the in Germany", for a new
Netherlands, Italy and magazine
Germany.

3
 Career
• Stieglitz considered himself an artist, but
he refused to sell his photographs.
• In late 1892, he took two of his best-
known images, Winter, Fifth Avenue and
The Terminal.
• He won first place for his photography, The Last
Joke, Bellagio, in 1887 from Amateur
Photographer. The next year he won both first and
second prizes in the same competition.
• He continued to exhibit in shows in Europe and the
U.S., and by 1898 he had gained a solid reputation
as a photographer. He was paid $75. which is about
$2500 nowadays
4
• In 1917 he met the painter
Georgia O’Keeffe, who would
quickly become his lover and
finally (in 1924) his wife, after
Stieglitz gained a divorce from his
first wife, the former Emmeline
Obermeyer. His serial portrait of
O’Keeffe, made over a period of
20 years, contains more than 300
individual pictures

5
In the late spring of
In May 1909, Stieglitz's father
1907, Stieglitz
Edward died, and in his will he left
collaborated on a his son the then significant sum of
series of $10,000 ($301,593 now). Stieglitz
photographic used this new cash to keep his
experiments with his gallery and Camera Work in
friend Clarence H. business for the next several years.
White.

6
 A Venetian Canal (1894)

Stieglitz's The Steerage (1907)

7
"Personally I like my photography
straight, unmanipulated, devoid of
all tricks; a print not looking like
anything but a photograph, living
through its own inherent qualities
and revealing its own spirit."
- Alfred Stieglitz
Fun facts

Stieglitz produced more than

Many his works are held at the
2,500 mounted photographs
Minneapolis Institute of Art.
over his career.

‘” Photography is my passion. Stieglitz was a perfectionist,

The search for Truth my and it showed in every aspect
obsession.“ of Camera Work, his
-Alfred photographic journal.

9
conclusion

• Alfred Stieglitz's significance • Alfred Stieglitz led the

lies as much in his work as an Pictorialist movement, which
art dealer, exhibition advocated the artistic
organizer, publisher, and legitimacy of photography in
editor as it does in his career the United States.
as a photographer.
• Alfred Stieglitz lived to be 82.

10