Although he is often today more widely remembered as the husband of Southwestern painter Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz was one of the great voices of American modernism, helping to define both the formal aesthetics of American Modernism - and so American art from the beginning to the middle of the 20th century - as well as the relationship that would develop in the last century between the artist and the latest forms of mechanical reproduction, to borrow a phrase from Walter Benjamin (Connor 40). This paper explores his contributions to photography in particular and Modernism in general.
As we learn from his autobiographical writings, Stieglitz (2002) Stieglitz was the first-born son of Edward Stieglitz, a retired woolen merchant. Although his parents were not well educated themselves (and indeed perhaps because of this) they were determined that their children should have every possible educational advantage - including being exposed to as much art and culture as possible. For this reason, in 1881 the Stieglitzes moved to Europe to give their children access to European schools, museums, and theaters. In 1883, Stieglitz (who had attended elementary and some high school in the United States) entered the Berlin Polytechnic to study mechanical engineering - one of the first signs of what would be a lifelong dedication to novel ways of combining mechanical potential and artistic expression.
He would, however, remain enrolled for only a few months: When he purchased his first camera later that year he decided to leave school - and both engineering and drawing - to explore the marvelous new world that he believed that photography opened up to him as well as everyone else (Kiefer 19).
From his first months as a photography, Stieglitz understood that it would be difficult to get many people to view photographs as artistic rather than simply mechanical. He become almost possessed with the idea that he alone could transform the pu...