Photographer Alfred Stieglitz

At the same time that he pronounced the virtues of straight photography (a picture should be a combination of subject, just the right moment, and an artist's unique vision, rather than a product of darkroom manipulation or other painterly contrivances), he encouraged, and became mentor to, photographers who unabashedly imitated the aesthetics of painting. Stieglitz believed that "art is the only true expression of the individual in our mechanized society" (Jussim 248).

The fact that he used the medium of photography, which many artists and critics consider to be a mechanized medium devoid of handwork, is a tribute to his own artistic vision. He was capable of conjuring up tender and exquisite visions with a camera, regardless of the device's apparent objectivity. His 1902 "Spring Showers" presents the following image: rainy weather, a little city tree, and a street-sweeper at the place where Broadway crosses Fifth Avenue" (Vestal 728). The image is photographic, yet the whole is greater than the sum of its parts: the scene, in its entirety, has an em

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ives and prints, and he himself experimented with gum printing and the glycerine process (thus contradicting some of his own principles against over manipulation), in his mature years he preferred to stick closely to the basic properties of the camera, lens, and emulsion. His acceptance of those who varied their techniques from those he espoused speaks to his overriding conviction that the work must ultimately be judged on its own aesthetic merit. In addition, it did not hurt his cause that more artistic photographs could do much to advance photography as one of the fine arts. Newhall gives an excellent description of Stieglitz's style and technique: "[he was], by conviction and instinct, an exponent of the 'straight photograph,' working chiefly in the open air, with rapid exposures, leaving his models to pose themselves, and relying for results upon means strictly photographic. He is to be counted among the impressionists, fully conceiving his picture before he attempts to take it, seeking for effects of vivid actuality and reducing the final record to its simplest form of expression" (168). Stieglitz would no doubt argue that the photographer's aesthetic temperament invariably shows in the photograph, without the need for
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