By the 1920s two of America's master photographers, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, had abandoned pictorialism—the soft-focused painterly approach to photography so prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—in favor of a straight approach to photography in which clarity and the use of the medium's unique properties were emphasized. Yet even with the some theoretical approach, Weston's precise, sharply focused, high-key photographs emphasize form, thereby contrasting with Stieglitz' softer, darker, and, at times, moody prints. Weston appealed to the mind, while Stieglitz accentuated emotion. Weston was an innovator, but it was Stieglitz who was the dominant force of photography and the father of American photography.
Forerunner of Medium
From his earliest years as a photographer, Stieglitz was questioning and pushing the limits of the medium. For example, in 1889 he exposed, developed, and printed a photograph in thirty-seven minutes at the Berlin Jubilee Exhibition, thus showing the potential of photography in illustrating news stories. Then, in 1892, he was one of the first photographers to take his 4 X 5 inch hand camera out into the streets of New York City. Also during these early years, he was photographing moving objects in the rain, sleet, and snow, creating such stunning photographs as Night, New York (1896-97) and Icy Night (1898). Years before it became popular, Stieglitz was experimenting with lumière autochromes and color photography. In addition, by changing the contrast, tone, and range of values of lantern slides, he changed them from educational tools and entertainment devices into an art form. These accomplishments in the art were achieved years before his involvement with galleries, exhibitions, and the publications for which he is equally well known.
By the 1890s Stieglitz had already begun his quest to gain recognition for photography as an art form equal to the other arts. His efforts culminated in 1902 in the first Photo-Secession exhibition at the National Arts Club in New York. The exhibition signaled a new direction in American photography, as did the formation of the Photo-Secession movement, an informal organization directed by Stieglitz and aimed at legitimizing pictorial photography as art.
In 1905, devoting more of his time and energy to the advancement of photography, contemporaneous with the artist and photographer Edward Steichen, Stieglitz opened the Photo-Secession Gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue. It later was known as "291." Until its closing in 1917, "291" was the gallery and forum for modern photography and painting in the United States. Furthermore, from 1903 to 1917, Stieglitz edited and published Camera Work, a magazine through which he promoted photography and other visual arts with timely articles on contemporary art and criticism. Camera Work was illustrated with beautiful photogravures printed on Japanese tissues, which were often more exquisite than the originals. In the last few years of Camera Work's existence, Stieglitz published 291, the proto-Dada and experimental publication devoted to the most modern, satirical visual and literary art of its time. Until "291" closed its doors and Camera Works ceased publication in 1917, Stieglitz received numerous visitors at the gallery and personally changed their views about photography, art, and life.
Between 1917 and 1925, when Stieglitz was no longer responsible for the gallery and its
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