Alfred Stieglitz, an American Photographer Who Helped Shape Photography as an Art Form

Born in New Jersey in 1864, Alfred Stieglitz was a modern art promoter, photographer, editor, writer, New York gallery owner and married at the age of 60 to the “Mother of American modernism”, Georgia O’Keeffe. Stieglitz is perhaps a name in history that you don’t hear too often. He was one of the first New York gallery owners to exhibit Ansel Adams in 1936 and had an influential voice in the shaping photography as modern art movement in the United States during the early 1900s.

Stieglitz’s interest in photography started on a trip through the European countryside in 1884 with his parents. It was on this trip he bought his first camera, an 8×10 film camera requiring a tripod, and took photographs of landscapes and peasants throughout Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. Through his studies in Europe is where Stieglitch first discovered and experimented with photography as an art form. While abroad he started writing for The Amateur Photographer magazine and won first place for his own photography, The Last Joke, Bellagio in 1887. He went on to win first and second prizes the following year and his reputation began to spread as…