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 several other European magazines published his work. He returned to New York in 1890 after his sister died while giving birth and three years later, at 29, married his first wife, 20 year-old Emmeline Obermeyer. They had one daughter, Katherine (“Kitty”) born September 27, 1898.

Once back in New York, Stieglitz considered himself an artist despite refusing to sell his photographs. He continued to win awards for his photography at exhibitions, including the joint exhibition of the Boston Camera Club, Photographic Society of Philadelphia and the Society of Amateur Photographers of New York. Some of his best known images are Winter — Fifth Avenue and The Terminal which he took with his first hand-held camera, a Folmer and Schwig 4×5 plate film camera. Eight years after returning to New York, he was paid $75 (equivalent to $2,206 in 2017) for his favorite print, Winter — Fifth Avenue. He commonly used the Photogravure process on his work which is a developing/printing…