|
||||
Tool of the Trade: single lens reflex camera |
||||
There are many schools of painting. Why should there not be many schools of photographic art? There is hardly a right and a wrong in these matters, but there is truth, and that should form the basis of all works of art. Alfred Stieglitz, American Amateur Photographer, 1893 |
||||
|
|
|
||||
Stieglitz stood for three hours in a driving blizzard to get this picture | ||||
Alfred Stieglitz was always interested in photography as an art form. He was also interested in the technical boundaries of photography. This picture is one of his early experiments in stopping motion, in this case the motion of a horse-drawn carriage and the wind-whipped snow. Stieglitz stood for three hours in a driving blizzard to get this picture, waiting for something picturesque to come moving through the storm. The snow was a critical aspect, for this picture was also a Stieglitz experiment in atmosphere. Rather than use a special soft-focus lens (called a Lens of Atmosphere in advertisements), Stieglitz wanted to take straight, hand-held detective camera photos of real, observed moments. He needed naturally-occuring atmosphere to create a mood, situating his pictures squarely in the realm of the art world. Weather provided the atmosphere, the fuzzy, soft-focus effects that could double as brushstrokes. Weather could be means to his artistic ends and Stieglitz would turn to it again and again. |
||||
|
|
||||
|
||||
As Stieglitz tells it he had returned from Europe in 1890 and found New York to be a culturally barren place, and wondered how he was ever going to live in this desolation. He was out tromping around New York photographing, and came upon the streetcar driver patiently watering his horses at the end of the line. When he saw the streetcar driver nourishing his horses so they could continue their journey, Stieglitz decided that he should assume the same role and nourish the arts in this country. (Sarah Greenough, In Focus: Alfred Stieglitz, 1995) When Stieglitz took this picture in 1892 he was interested in pictorial photography, a style of picture-making that was meant to put photography on the same level as other art forms, such as painting and sculpture. For Pictorialist photographers, the everyday scenes in front of their cameras were not by themselves subjects for great art; the photographers needed to shape the picture to express their own artistry. Photographers used many devices to shape a photograph, and there were a few elements that applied to most turn-of-the-century pictorial photographs, including this one. Click on the diagram bar above to find out what makes this photo Pictorial. |
||||
|
|
||||
Photographers ridiculed their colleagues who produced out of focus pictures by calling their style the "Fuzzy Wuzzy School." | ||||
Photographer Alfred Stieglitz subscribed to a theory that the principal subject of a photo should be in sharp focus while secondary elements should be left out of focus. The theory was called naturalism because it was thought that these types of photographs most closely resembled the way the human eye naturally sees things, focusing on one area while surrounding details fall away. In Spring Showers, New York, Stieglitz let the weather keep the photos background slightly out of focus, then added to the effect when he printed the negative by keeping the area in low contrast and evenly toned. Controlled soft-focus effects like those in this picture are not to be confused with out of focus photographs. If this picture were out of focus the tree in the foreground would lack its sharp definition. It is just that definition, balanced with the soft gray in the background, that gives this photo its delicate feeling. Photographers at the turn of the century ridiculed their colleagues who produced out of focus pictures by calling their style the Fuzzy Wuzzy School. The sanitation worker in the left side of the picture is not the subject; he provides visual weight. Without him, the off-center and slightly tilting tree combined with the curbs diagonal line to the right would throw the picture out of balance. |
||||
|
|
||||
|
||||
The racetrack was a place to see and be seen by the upper middle class when Alfred Stieglitz took this picture in 1904. The real subject of this photo, however, is the formal relationships of the curving track, the horizon line, and ceiling and pillars in front of them. Stieglitz, a fan of all things modern and tuned into modern art movements in Europe, used architectural elements to carve up space in this picture a very modern idea indeed. The big, abstract shapes that result fit together like pieces of a puzzle. Modern painting at the turn of the century had begun to record the painter's physical, intellectual and emotional experience of things. As far as Stieglitz was concerned if painting was no longer limited to subjects like nature, religion, love and war, then photography would not be limited either. Now a painting, a photograph, and all art forms, could capture the vital essence of the modern world by reflecting the personal vision of the artist. The atmosphere of his earlier pictorial work is still here, but in this picture there's also a hint of modern things to come for Stieglitz. |
||||
|
|
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
Alfred Stieglitz said the Flat-iron building appeared to be moving toward me like the bow of a monster steamera picture of a new America still in the making. (American Visions, Robert Hughes, 1997) For New Yorkers the Fuller building, nicknamed the Flat-iron because of its shape, was a symbol of a new, modern America. People either loved it or hated it. Contrasted with the natural shape of the tree and bathed in snow and evening light, the building is an element of quiet beauty in a photograph of soft tones and simple shapes. The building and the tree form silhouettes, like cut-outs overlapping one on top of the other. This flattening of space comes from the influence of Japanese wood-block prints that were all the rage with modern artists of the time. Other clues that point to the influence of Japanese prints are the crescent of snow in the crook of the tree (the same tone as the building), and the tiny figure on the park bench. Humans were often dwarfed by mountains and rocks in Japanese prints; in New York, buildings do the job of making people seem tiny. Stieglitz argued that photographers dealt with the same concerns that modern painters considered. Translating the influence of Japanese prints from painting and printmaking to photography was both a modern and an artistic thing to do. |
||||||||
|
|
|
||||
"I saw shapes related to one anothera picture of shapes, and underlying it, a new vision that held me " | ||||
|
||||
The Steerage marked a turning point for Alfred Stieglitz. In it, he abandoned the idea that photographs should bear some likeness to paintings, and embarked on a new path to explore photos as photos in their own right. The man who had led the charge for photographs to take a place beside painting in the world of art now took straight photographs that looked like camera work, not brushwork. In 1923, Stieglitz wrote, My photographs look like photographs and they therefore cant be considered art. (Camera Work, A Pictorial Guide, 1978) He never even attempted to cover up the changes in his thinking. The atmospheric effects and limited tonal range of pictorial photographs were replaced by sharp focus everywhere and a full range of blacks and whites in The Steerage. Also new in this photo was Stieglitzs apparent belief that form and composition were the essential elements in a photograph. He described the moment he saw the picture, on a boat headed for Europe: The scene fascinated me: A round straw hat; the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right; the white drawbridge, its railings made of chain; white suspenders crossed on the back of a man below; circular iron machinery; a mast that cut into the sky, completing the triangle. I stood spellbound for a while. I saw shapes related to one anothera picture of shapes, and underlying it, a new vision that held me: simple people; the feeling of ship, ocean, sky . . . (Weston Naef, ed., In Focus: Alfred Stieglitz, 1995) As well as being a fundamental shift in Stieglitzs thinking about pictorial photography, this picture serves as a comment on economic divisions of society. The white gangplank that divides the picture into two parts, upper and lower, also serves as a symbolic divide for the people in the picture. Below the line is the steerage, one big hold reserved for people who couldnt afford staterooms. Above the line is an observation deck for everyone aboard the ship. The photographers graphic vision of shapes and balance and the social conditions of the day are united in one remarkable picture. Ironically, Stieglitz would not recognize the social aspect of this photograph until many years after he had taken it. For Stieglitz, the main considerations were visual. |
||||
|
|
|
||||
|
||||
The Deal in the title of this picture refers to Deal, New Jersey, where Alfred Stieglitz took the picture. No longer concerned with photographs that looked like paintings, Stieglitz now emphasized modern art and photographs that looked like the work of a camera rather than a paintbrush. Creative photographs, according to Stieglitz, should be photographic. Everyday subjects came into sharp focus in Stieglitzs lens, preventing viewers from escaping into romantic images of life. No more soft, misty effects, contrast was now useful. A full tonal range of blacks and whites is evident in this print, unmistakably made by a camera. Stieglitz still thought of the photograph as an avenue of expression, an idea he had fully developed with the Pictorialists. Now, however, he added concerns of modern art like line, shape and balance. This photography was really about photography. |
||||
|
|
|
||||
For more about Alfred Stieglitz: |
||||
Weston Naef, (ed.), In
Focus: Alfred Stieglitz, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995 |
||||
|
||||
Dorothy Norman, Alfred Stieglitz An American
Seer, Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1973 |
||||
|
||||
For more on Alfred Stieglitz and Camera Work: |
||||
Marianne Fulton Margolis, (ed.), Camera Work,
A Pictorial Guide, New York: Dover Publications, 1978 |
||||
|
||||
John Green, (ed.), Camera Work: A Critical Anthology, Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1973 |
||||
|
||||
ArtsConnectEd http://www.artsconnected.org/ |
||||
|
||||
|
|
||||||
For more about Berenice Abbott:Berenice Abbott, Berenice Abbott Photographs, New York: Horizon Press, 1970
Hank ONeal, Berenice Abbott American Photographer, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1982
Bonnie Yochelson, Berenice Abbott: Changing New York, New York: The New Press, 1997
Berenice Abbott, New Guide to Better Photography, New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1953
Kay Weaver and Martha Wheelock, Berenice Abbott, A View of the 20th Century, Los Angeles: Ishtar Films, 1992 (Color, 59 minutes)
Classic Essays on Photography, ed. Alan Trachtenberg, New Haven, Conn.: Leetes Island Books, Inc., 1951
Link to Museum of the City of New York
|
||||||
|