The Life of Alfred Stieglitz Essay Example

of Paul Strand during the last four years of “291”. Stieglitz reconsidered photography’s position, not as it related to painting but on its own inherent characteristics. He underwent a transformation in his aesthetic thinking.Stieglitz decided that for photography to grow it had to stop mimicking other mediums and return to its original “straight” foundation: the direct, minimally manipulated, camera-made view. He showed this in his photograph The Steerage. He wondered how America could expect to produce first-rate creative figures without societal support.

Stieglitz continued to photograph the expanding urban experience, with “high art” images of ferry boats , flying machines, railroad yards, and skyscrapers.By 1917, Stieglitz would become proponent of “straight” photography. He presented a sequence of eleven Strand photogravures that moved from pictorialist notions into modernistic ideologies. After a decade of facilitating the work of others, Stieglitz returned to making images. In 1922, he continued to explore this inner psychological theme, but he returned the last time to nature and symbolist theory and isolated the sky as a surrogate heart.

He photographed skyscrapers which made him the chief photographer for Conde Nast Publicationsin 1923. Stieglitz wanted to prove that photography could have an aesthetic validity without imitating painting. He never interfered with reality often waiting for hours until "everything was in balance". He founded the "Photo-Secession" group in 1902 and managed a small gallery in New York later to be named the 291 Gallery. He introduced the works of Rodin, Cezenne, Toulouse Lautrec, Picasso, Braque and Brancusi to America.