DOI Heft:
Nr. 174 (August, 1911)
DOI Artikel:Laurvik, J. Nilsen: Alfred Stieglitz, pictorial photographer
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43447#0129
Alfred Stieglitz
GOING TO THE POST
BY ALFRED STIEGLITZ
tures were not an expression of his innate pictorial
point of view. Rather, they appear to have been
made with a special purpose, to confound the carp-
ing, sneering critics of photography by refuting
their oft-repeated contention that this sort of thing
could be done only by the painter. That he soon
tired of conventional picture making is strikingly
shown in a series of photographs made during a
sojourn in Italy and Switzerland, where he photo-
graphed the street urchins and peasants who ap-
pealed to him because of their naive simplicity.
This journey resulted in an interesting series of
prints that reveal an instinctive sense of selection,
a sort of intuitive feeling for composition, as ex-
pressive as it is unhackneyed. This is admirably
shown in a picture of a group of women, in kneel-
ing postures, washing clothes on the shore of a
mountain lake. This print, made back in 1887, is
characterized by the same unostentatious direct-
ness, the same forthrightness which has come to
be the distinguishing mark of all his work. In
treatment and subject matter it is related to his
Fifth Avenue Bus, made in 1893, and his Hand, of
Man, made a little later. It is an episode out of
the life of the day, treated with all the truthful-
ness of photography. In this, as in his later work,
there is no attempt to win cheap renown by fuzzy-
wuzzy methods of printing or developing. It is
the straightest kind of straight photography, in
which the elements of light and natural, sponta-
neous arrangement, such as one may find by assid-
uously observing nature, has been carefully stud-
ied. In the same year as the foregoing appeared a
wayside scene on the Italian roads, called A Good
Joke, which showed a group of boys and girls of
varying ages, bubbling over with merriment,
which is not of the theatrical, “ Please-look-pleas-
ant ’ ’ sort. In its spontaneous, unaffected natural-
ness of pose, gesture and expression this print fur-
nishes a remarkable proof of Mr. Stieglitz’s unerr-
ing sense of the right moment and his ability to
take advantage of it. Executed with an old-fash-
ioned tripod camera, before the days of the snap-
shot kodak, it immediately attracted general at-
tention and was promptly awarded the first prize
in the “Holiday Work Competition” by Dr. P. H.
Emerson, of London, then the leading authority
on photography. This was the beginning of a
long series of prizes and medals awarded him,
which today number up in the hundreds.
Wherever his work was shown it aroused com-
ment by reason of its fine technical qualities and
its very individual and personal point of view.
Wherever he went he found material out of the
life of the people, breaking new ground and open-
ing the eyes of the world to hitherto unsuspected
pictorial possibilities of seemingly impossible
places. Having done this, he has been satisfied,
and left the exploitation of his discoveries to his
more strenuous followers, who have not infre-
quently reaped the laurels. Thus, in his fine, aus-
terely impressive print called The Bridge, made in
1888, showing a scene from Chioggia, a large fish-
ing village some distance from Venice, he pointed
the way for Coburn, Kuhn and Steichen, as he did
later for many painters with his Katwyk series,
which discovered this picturesque little Dutch
fishing village to the world of art. One of the
most interesting of this series, called Scurrying
Home, made in 1894, was purchased by the gov-
ernment for the National Gallery at Brussels, and
his Gossip at Katwyk, shown in the Exhibition of
Graphic Arts in Munich in 1896, was signaled out
by Lenbach for special comment. In 1889 he was
awarded the highest honors at the Berlin Jubilee
Exhibition, together with the foremost men in his
profession.
There were not wanting those who were in-
clined to attribute his early successes to the pic-
turesque scenes through which he traveled in for-
eign countries, a fallacy not infrequently indulged
in by many of our painters who seek inspiration in
Venice, in Fontainebleau, in Spain and Holland,
because some one else in accord with the spirit of
XXIV
GOING TO THE POST
BY ALFRED STIEGLITZ
tures were not an expression of his innate pictorial
point of view. Rather, they appear to have been
made with a special purpose, to confound the carp-
ing, sneering critics of photography by refuting
their oft-repeated contention that this sort of thing
could be done only by the painter. That he soon
tired of conventional picture making is strikingly
shown in a series of photographs made during a
sojourn in Italy and Switzerland, where he photo-
graphed the street urchins and peasants who ap-
pealed to him because of their naive simplicity.
This journey resulted in an interesting series of
prints that reveal an instinctive sense of selection,
a sort of intuitive feeling for composition, as ex-
pressive as it is unhackneyed. This is admirably
shown in a picture of a group of women, in kneel-
ing postures, washing clothes on the shore of a
mountain lake. This print, made back in 1887, is
characterized by the same unostentatious direct-
ness, the same forthrightness which has come to
be the distinguishing mark of all his work. In
treatment and subject matter it is related to his
Fifth Avenue Bus, made in 1893, and his Hand, of
Man, made a little later. It is an episode out of
the life of the day, treated with all the truthful-
ness of photography. In this, as in his later work,
there is no attempt to win cheap renown by fuzzy-
wuzzy methods of printing or developing. It is
the straightest kind of straight photography, in
which the elements of light and natural, sponta-
neous arrangement, such as one may find by assid-
uously observing nature, has been carefully stud-
ied. In the same year as the foregoing appeared a
wayside scene on the Italian roads, called A Good
Joke, which showed a group of boys and girls of
varying ages, bubbling over with merriment,
which is not of the theatrical, “ Please-look-pleas-
ant ’ ’ sort. In its spontaneous, unaffected natural-
ness of pose, gesture and expression this print fur-
nishes a remarkable proof of Mr. Stieglitz’s unerr-
ing sense of the right moment and his ability to
take advantage of it. Executed with an old-fash-
ioned tripod camera, before the days of the snap-
shot kodak, it immediately attracted general at-
tention and was promptly awarded the first prize
in the “Holiday Work Competition” by Dr. P. H.
Emerson, of London, then the leading authority
on photography. This was the beginning of a
long series of prizes and medals awarded him,
which today number up in the hundreds.
Wherever his work was shown it aroused com-
ment by reason of its fine technical qualities and
its very individual and personal point of view.
Wherever he went he found material out of the
life of the people, breaking new ground and open-
ing the eyes of the world to hitherto unsuspected
pictorial possibilities of seemingly impossible
places. Having done this, he has been satisfied,
and left the exploitation of his discoveries to his
more strenuous followers, who have not infre-
quently reaped the laurels. Thus, in his fine, aus-
terely impressive print called The Bridge, made in
1888, showing a scene from Chioggia, a large fish-
ing village some distance from Venice, he pointed
the way for Coburn, Kuhn and Steichen, as he did
later for many painters with his Katwyk series,
which discovered this picturesque little Dutch
fishing village to the world of art. One of the
most interesting of this series, called Scurrying
Home, made in 1894, was purchased by the gov-
ernment for the National Gallery at Brussels, and
his Gossip at Katwyk, shown in the Exhibition of
Graphic Arts in Munich in 1896, was signaled out
by Lenbach for special comment. In 1889 he was
awarded the highest honors at the Berlin Jubilee
Exhibition, together with the foremost men in his
profession.
There were not wanting those who were in-
clined to attribute his early successes to the pic-
turesque scenes through which he traveled in for-
eign countries, a fallacy not infrequently indulged
in by many of our painters who seek inspiration in
Venice, in Fontainebleau, in Spain and Holland,
because some one else in accord with the spirit of
XXIV