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Alfred Stieglitz Abstract Photography

American, 1864-1946

Few individuals have exerted as strong an influence on 20th-century American art and culture as the photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz

Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1864 during the Civil War, Stieglitz lived until 1946. He began to take photographs while a student in Berlin in the 1880s and studied with the renowned photochemist Hermann Wilhelm Vogel. On his return to the United States in 1890, he began to advocate that photography should be treated as an art. He wrote many articles arguing his cause, edited the periodicals Camera Notes (1897–1902) and Camera Work (1903–1917), and in 1902 formed the Photo-Secession, an organization of photographers committed to establishing the artistic merit of photography.

Stieglitz photographed New York for more than 25 years, portraying its streets, parks, and newly emerging skyscrapers; its horse-drawn carriages, trolleys, trains, and ferry boats; as well as some of its people. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, he also focused his camera on the landscape around his summer home in Lake George, New York. 

In 1918 Stieglitz became consumed with photographing his future wife, the artist Georgia O’Keeffe. For many years he had wanted to make an extended photographic portrait — he called it a composite portrait — in which he would study one person over a long period. Over the next 19 years, he made more than 330 finished portraits of her. Beginning in 1922 and continuing throughout the 1920s, he also became preoccupied with another subject, clouds, making more than 300 finished studies of them.

Photography was always of central importance to Stieglitz: not only was it the medium he employed to express himself, but, more fundamentally, it was the touchstone he used to evaluate all art. Just as it is apparent today that computers and digital technology will dominate not only our lives but also our thinking in this century, so too did Stieglitz realize, long before many of his contemporaries, that photography would be a major cultural force in the 20th century. Fascinated with what he called “the idea of photography,” Stieglitz foresaw that it would revolutionize all aspects of the way we learn and communicate and that it would profoundly alter all of the arts.

Stieglitz’s own photographs were central to his understanding of the medium: they were the instruments he used to plumb both its expressive potential and its relationship to the other arts. When he began to photograph in the early 1880s, the medium was barely 40 years old. Complicated and cumbersome and employed primarily by professionals, photography was seen by most as an objective tool and utilized for its descriptive and recording capabilities. 

By the time ill health forced Stieglitz to stop photographing in 1937, photography and the public’s perception of it had changed dramatically, thanks in large part to his efforts. Through the publications he edited, including Camera Notes, Camera Work, and 291; through the exhibitions he organized; and through his own lucid and insightful photographs, Stieglitz had conclusively demonstrated the expressive power of the medium.

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(Biography provided by PDNB Gallery)

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Artist: Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz Photogravure "City of Ambition, " 1910, New York Image
By Alfred Stieglitz
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Alfred Stieglitz (American, Hoboken, New Jersey 1864–1946 New York) "City of Ambition" from Camera Work Number 36 (1910) Photogravure on Japanese tissue mounted on paper, as issued. ...
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Early 20th Century Alfred Stieglitz Abstract Photography

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Equivalents
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Alfred Stieglitz made the Equivalents cloud studies between 1925 and 1934. They are often recognized as the first photographs free of literal subject matter and considered some of th...
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Early 20th Century Alfred Stieglitz Abstract Photography

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Alfred Stieglitz abstract photography for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Alfred Stieglitz abstract photography available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Alfred Stieglitz in paper, silver gelatin print and more. Not every interior allows for large Alfred Stieglitz abstract photography, so small editions measuring 5 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Edward Weston, Bob Tabor, and Robert Weingarten. Alfred Stieglitz abstract photography prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $4,500 and tops out at $85,000, while the average work can sell for $44,750.

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