Georgia O’Keeffe: A PortraitArt Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition: ‘Once. Again. Photographs in Series’ at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 9th July – 10th November, 2019

Curator: Mazie Harris

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) 'Georgia O'Keeffe: A Portrait' 1918 from the exhibition 'Once. Again. Photographs in Series' at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles, July - Nov, 2019

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portrait
1918
Gelatin silver print
Image: 11.4 × 8.6cm (4 1/2 × 3 3/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Some fabulous photographs in series in this posting, which document transformations in landscapes or intimate portraits of people at different times in their lives… and some challenging ones as well. My favourite photographs in series are not represented: Duane Michals narrative fairytales; Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills; and Nicholas Nixon’s The Brown Sisters.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thanks to the J. Paul Getty Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Photographers often record change through images in series, registering transformations in the world around them. Artists featured in the exhibition photographed faces and places over minutes, months, or years. Historical and contemporary photographs prompt reflection on the ways the passage of time impacts how we see people and spaces.

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portrait
1923
Gelatin silver print
Image: 8.9 × 11.7cm (3 1/2 × 4 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portrait
1933
Gelatin silver print
Image: 8.9 × 11.4cm (3 1/2 × 4 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Artists have long used cameras to record change, documenting transformations in landscapes or intimate portraits of people at different times in their lives. Once. Again. Photographs in Series, on view July 9 – November 10, 2019 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, features historical and contemporary artists who have revisited people and places to make extended photographic series, prompting reflection on the impact of the passage of time – on photographers as well as their subjects.

The exhibition, drawn primarily from the collection of the Getty Museum, takes its cue from artist Gordon Parks’ trips to Brazil over several decades to document the life of Flávio da Silva. Parks’ photographs are on view in Gordon Parks: The Flávio Story, installed in the adjacent galleries of the Center for Photographs.

Photographing friends and family is a familiar pastime for many, and the exhibition includes the work of several artists who made masterful portraits of loved ones over the course of many years. Alfred Stieglitz photographed artist Georgia O’Keeffe frequently during their tumultuous 30 year relationship, and the photographs on view expose shifts in their rapport as well as changes in Stieglitz’s photographic style over time. Series by Harry Callahan of his wife Eleanor, Paul Strand of his wife, artist Rebecca Salsbury, and Julia Margaret Cameron of her niece Julia Jackson similarly offer fascinating reflections on the changes in relationships over time.

The exhibition also includes compelling contemporary portraits, including photojournalist Seamus Murphy’s record of the physical and emotional toll inflicted upon a family living in Afghanistan under rule of the Taliban, and Donna Ferrato’s documentation of a woman who fled an abusive relationship. Both series register the struggles as well as triumphs.

A number of artists in the exhibition document seasonal and man-made changes in the landscape. In a 1953 series by William A. Garnett, aerial photography is used to capture a walnut grove before and after the trees were felled to make way for a housing development. The startling perspective of Garnett’s images came to play an important role in the burgeoning environmental movement. Richard Misrach used his move to a new home in the hills above Berkeley, California, as an opportunity to take hundreds of photographs of the astonishing range of colours and atmospheric conditions surrounding the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset each evening. Several of his richly saturated sunset images are featured in the exhibition. Works by Roni Horn, Jem Southam, and Josef Sudek also trace changes in the natural world, to both political and poetic effect.

Transformations in the built environment also reveal the profound effects of the passage of time. LaToya Ruby Frazier documented the painful process of clearing the rooms of her family home in a series of self-portraits in which she cloaked herself in the familiar belongings of her loved ones. In order to spotlight socioeconomic changes in American neighbourhoods, Camilo José Vergara photographed the dramatic transformation of a single Harlem storefront over 40 years, as it changed hands, changed facades, and split into two establishments. Other artists in the exhibition, including John Divola and William Christenberry, chronicle the disintegration of architecture over time, creating evocative meditations on deterioration.

“‘Once again’ is a phrase repeated in a poem by William Wordsworth,” says Mazie Harris, assistant curator of photographs at the Getty Museum and curator of the exhibition. “He was fascinated by the powerful feeling that arises when revisiting a familiar place. He’s experiencing his surroundings in real time and yet is constantly aware of his memories of being there before. The photographers in this exhibition conjure that same sensation. They offer us the opportunity to see people and places afresh, even as we track the powerful changes wrought by time.”

Once. Again. Photographs in Series, is on view July 9-November 10, 2019 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center. The exhibition is curated by Mazie Harris, assistant curator of photographs at the Getty Museum.

Press release from the J. Paul Getty Museum website [Online] Cited 11/08/2019

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
The Window of My Studio
1940-1954
Gelatin silver print
Image: 22.1 × 14.1cm (8 11/16 × 5 9/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© I&G Fárová Heirs

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
The Window of My Studio
1940-1954
Gelatin silver print
Image: 17.1 × 10.3cm (6 3/4 × 4 1/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© I&G Fárová Heirs

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
The Window of My Studio
1940-1954
Gelatin silver print
Image: 23.5 × 16.5cm (9 1/4 × 6 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© I&G Fárová Heirs

William A. Garnett (American, 1916-2006)
Walnut Grove Standing
March 21, 1953
Gelatin silver print
Image: 34.3 × 26.7cm (13 1/2 × 10 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Estate of William A. Garnett

William A. Garnett (American, 1916-2006)
Walnut Grove Bulldozed
March 21, 1953
Gelatin silver print
Image: 26.5 × 34.3cm (10 7/16 × 13 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Estate of William A. Garnett

William A. Garnett (American, 1916-2006)
Walnut Grove Uprooted by Bulldozers
March 22, 1953
Gelatin silver print
Image (trimmed to mount): 34.1 × 26.5cm (13 7/16 × 10 7/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Estate of William A. Garnett

Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Michael and Pam
1973
Gelatin silver print
Image: 17.9 × 17.4cm (7 1/16 × 6 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Milton Rogovin

Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Yvonne and Daughter Sonya
1974
Gelatin silver print
Image: 18 × 17.3cm (7 1/16 × 6 13/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Milton Rogovin

Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Yvonne and Daughter Sonya
1974
Gelatin silver print
Image: 17.2 × 17.2cm (6 3/4 × 6 3/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Milton Rogovin

Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Yvonne and Daughter Sonya
1974
Gelatin silver print
Image: 18.1 × 16.8cm (7 1/8 × 6 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Milton Rogovin

John Divola (American, born 1949) 'Zuma' 1977

John Divola (American, b. 1949)
Zuma
1977
Chromogenic print
Image: 24.7 × 30.4cm (9 3/4 × 11 15/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of the Wilson Centre for Photography
© John Divola

John Divola (American, b. 1949)
Zuma
1977
Chromogenic print
Image: 24.8 × 30.6cm (9 3/4 × 12 1/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of the Wilson Centre for Photography
© John Divola

John Divola (American, b. 1949)
Zuma
1977
Chromogenic print
Image: 24.7 × 30.5cm (9 3/4 × 12 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of the Wilson Centre for Photography
© John Divola

Camilo José Vergara (American, born Chile, 1944) '65 East 125th Street, Harlem' December 1977

Camilo José Vergara (American born Chile, b. 1944)
65 East 125th Street, Harlem
December 1977
Chromogenic print
Image: 38.7 × 58.4cm (15 1/4 × 23 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Bruce Berman and Lea Russo
© Camilo José Vergara

Camilo José Vergara (American, born Chile, 1944) '65 East 125th Street, Harlem' October 1980

Camilo José Vergara (American born Chile, b. 1944)
65 East 125th Street, Harlem
October 1980
Chromogenic print
Image: 37.8 × 58.5cm (14 7/8 × 23 1/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Bruce Berman and Lea Russo
© Camilo José Vergara

Camilo José Vergara (American, born Chile, 1944) '65 East 125th Street, Harlem' October 1981

Camilo José Vergara (American born Chile, b. 1944)
65 East 125th Street, Harlem
October 1981
Chromogenic print
Image: 38.7 × 58.4cm (15 1/4 × 23 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Bruce Berman and Lea Russo
© Camilo José Vergara

Seamus Murphy (Irish, b. 1959)
Kabul: November 1994
1994, print 2015
Gelatin silver print
Image: 22.6 × 34.2cm (8 7/8 × 13 7/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of David Knaus
© Seamus Murphy

Seamus Murphy (Irish, b. 1959)
Ba Deli Family, Kabul: November 1996
1996, print 2015
Gelatin silver print
Image: 22.4 × 34.5cm (8 13/16 × 13 9/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of David Knaus
© Seamus Murphy

Seamus Murphy (Irish, b. 1959)
Gulbahar, Kapisa Province: June 2003
2003, print 2015
Gelatin silver print
Image: 34.6 × 22.6cm (13 5/8 × 8 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of David Knaus
© Seamus Murphy

Seamus Murphy (Irish, b. 1959)
Gulbahar, Kapisa Province: May 2009
2009, print 2015
Gelatin silver print
Image: 22.5 × 34.4cm (8 7/8 × 13 9/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of David Knaus
© Seamus Murphy

Seamus Murphy (Irish, b. 1959)
Kabul: July 2010
2010, print 2015
Gelatin silver print
Image: 22.6 × 34.7cm (8 7/8 × 13 11/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of David Knaus
© Seamus Murphy

Richard Misrach (American, b. 1949)
10.29.97, 4:35 PM
1997, print 1999
Chromogenic print
Image: 45.8 × 59cm (18 1/16 × 23 1/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/ MacGill Gallery, New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles

Richard Misrach (American, b. 1949)
2.21.98, 4:45 PM
1998, print 2016
Chromogenic print
Image: 152.4 × 188cm (60 × 74 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Sharyn and Bruce Charnas
© Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles

Richard Misrach (American, b. 1949)
2.16.98, 5:20 PM
1998, print 1999
Chromogenic print
Image: 46.2 × 58.9cm (18 3/16 × 23 3/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/ MacGill Gallery, New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles

Richard Misrach (American, b. 1949)
10.31.98, 5:22 PM
1998, print 1999
Chromogenic print
Image: 46.3 × 58.9cm (18 1/4 × 23 3/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/ MacGill Gallery, New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles

LaToya Ruby Frazier (American, b. 1982) 'Four photographs' 2010

LaToya Ruby Frazier (American, b. 1982)
Clockwise from top left: Wrapped in Gramps’ Blanket, 2010; In Grandma Ruby’s Velour Bottoms, 2010; Covered in Gramps’ Blanket, 2010; In Gramps’ Pajamas, 2010
Gelatin silver prints
Image (each): 43.5 × 58.4cm (17 1/8 × 23 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© LaToya Ruby Frazier

Jem Southam (British, b. 1950)
December 1996
1996
Chromogenic print
68.6 × 85.7cm (27 × 33 3/4 in.)
Gift of The Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson 2007 Trust
© Jem Southam

Jem Southam (British, b. 1950)
March 1998
1998
Chromogenic print
68.6 × 85.7cm (27 × 33 3/4 in.)
Gift of The Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson 2007 Trust
© Jem Southam

Jem Southam (British, b. 1950)
January 2000
2000
Chromogenic print
68.6 × 85.7cm (27 × 33 3/4 in.)
Gift of The Michael G. and C. Jane Wilson 2007 Trust
© Jem Southam

Donna Ferrato (American, b. 1949)
Sarah Augusta
2012
Pigment print
28.6 × 50.8cm (11 1/4 × 20 in.)
Gift of The Kevin & Delia Willsey Collection
© Donna Ferrato

Donna Ferrato (American, b. 1949)
Sarah Augusta Learning Self Defense
2013
Pigment print
33.9 × 50.9cm (13 3/8 × 20 1/16 in.)
Gift of The Kevin & Delia Willsey Collection
© Donna Ferrato

Donna Ferrato (American, b. 1949)
Sarah after a Court Hearing
2014
Pigment print
33.9 × 50.8cm (13 3/8 × 20 in.)
Gift of The Kevin & Delia Willsey Collection
© Donna Ferrato

Donna Ferrato (American, b. 1949)
Sarah and a member of B.A.C.A. discussing a strategy to protect the boys
2014
Pigment print
33.9 × 50.8cm (13 3/8 × 20 in.)
Gift of The Kevin & Delia Willsey Collection
© Donna Ferrato

Donna Ferrato (American, b. 1949)
Sarah
2013
Pigment print
50.8 x 33.9cm (20 in. x 13 3/8)
Gift of The Kevin & Delia Willsey Collection
© Donna Ferrato

The J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Drive
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Exhibition: ‘Alfred Stieglitz and Modern America’ at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Exhibition dates: 22nd July – 5th November, 2017

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) 'The Steerage' 1907 from the exhibition 'Alfred Stieglitz and Modern America' at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, July - Nov, 2017

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
The Steerage
1907
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Miss Georgia O’Keeffe
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Look at the tonality and sensuality in Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portrait (8) (1919, below) and Dancing Trees (1922, below). No one would ever think of printing a photograph like that today!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

This exhibition presents a selection of the MFA’s exceptional holdings of works by Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), the great American impresario of photography at the turn of the 20th century. Featuring 36 photographs, the exhibition showcases fine examples of his New York views, portraits and photographs that Stieglitz took at his family’s country home at Lake George. The New York views reveal the artist’s lifelong interest in the city, from his early explorations of the picturesque effects of rain, snow and nightfall to later ones that focus on the inherent geometry of modernity’s rising architectural structures. The portraits include 10 images from Stieglitz’s magnificent extended series of images of his wife, the celebrated painter Georgia O’Keeffe – a “portrait in time” that reflects his ideals of modern womanhood and is evocative of their close relationship. These portraits are accompanied by additional images of members of his family and friends.

The Lake George photographs include, in addition to views of the family property, a sequence of the mystical cloud studies that Stieglitz called “equivalents,” which explore the interpretation of inner states of being. Many of the photographs on view were donated by Stieglitz to the MFA in 1924 – making it one of the first museums in the US to collect photography as fine art. Enhanced by an additional gift from O’Keeffe in 1950, the MFA’s Stieglitz holdings form an outstanding survey of the photographer’s career, as well as the cornerstone of the Museum’s photography collection.

Text from the MFA website

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) 'From the Back Window - "291" (1)' 1915 from the exhibition 'Alfred Stieglitz and Modern America' at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, July - Nov, 2017

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
From the Back Window – “291” (1)
1915
Photograph, platinum print
Gift of Alfred Stieglitz
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

291

291 is the commonly known name for an internationally famous art gallery that was located in Midtown Manhattan at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City from 1905 to 1917. Originally known as the “Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession“, the gallery was created and managed by photographer Alfred Stieglitz.

The gallery is famous for two reasons. First, the exhibitions there helped bring art photography to the same stature in America as painting and sculpture. Pioneering artistic photographers such as Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude Käsebier and Clarence H. White all gained critical recognition through exhibitions at 291. Equally important, Stieglitz used this space to introduce to the United States some of the most avant-garde European artists of the time, including Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin, Henri Rousseau, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brâncuși, and the Dadaists Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portrait (4)
1918
Gelatin silver print
The Alfred Stieglitz Collection – Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, Sophie M. Friedman Fund and Lucy Dalbiac Luard Fund
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Dorothy True
1919
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Alfred Stieglitz
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

First published in 1921 with the caption “Watch your step!” in the single issue of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray’s magazine New York Dada, Stieglitz’s surreal portrait was a happy accident. Attempting to capture the modern character of Dorothy True, a friend of Georgia O’Keeffe, Stieglitz made two exposures: a conventional, full-face portrait and a view of one artfully posed leg. Stieglitz was thrilled with the fortuitous superimposition of the images, believing that together they captured the spirit of the postwar American female. While the equation of short hair and skirts with women’s liberation might seem trite today, Stieglitz made the portrait in 1919, the year that Congress extended suffrage to women. In 1926, he exhibited it with the title American Girl.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website

This double exposure of the face and leg of Dorothy True constitutes an unusual portrait. Her somewhat somber face, very faint, is not immediately apparent, but slowly a mouth, nose, and eye begin to reveal themselves in the black-stockinged ankle and calf. Alone, the image of the leg is an interesting one; her foot appears veritably stuffed into her stylish, patent leather pump. Her instep bulges out of the top of the shoe, and the leather ripples from the pressure at the toe, making the foot an almost sculptural form.

True appears to step down upon overturned prints or mats. A chair casts a graphic shadow across the floor, and a vertical paper backdrop echoes the black shadow at the upper left, uncovered by the sagging paper. The neat triangle of True’s skirt lends additional geometric balance.

Text from the Getty Museum website

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portrait (8)
1919
Palladium print, solarised
Gift of Alfred Stieglitz
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia Engelhard
1920
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Alfred Stieglitz
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Georgia Engelhard (American, 1906-1986)

Georgia Engelhard was the first child of George Engelhard and Agnes Stieglitz. It is as the niece of Alfred Stieglitz, modernism’s most successful early booster in the United States, that Engelhard’s artistic career was encouraged. From the age of 12 to 22 she corresponded regularly with Stieglitz who serve as a confidant to the young woman. Engelhard occasionally posed for Stieglitz and the uncle honoured her with an exhibition at his famous gallery, 291, when she was only ten years old. (Stieglitz’s motivation to show his niece’s work was more than likely a response to Wassily Kandinsky’s proposition that there was a fundamental spirituality to be found in true art and that children’s art had the ability to convey this “inner truth.”)

It is under the tutelage of Stieglitz’s wife, Georgia O’Keeffe, that Engelhard matured as a painter. In biographies Engelhard is repeatedly mentioned as O’Keeffe’s friend and companion. Georgia minor, as Engelhard was called, served as comic release for the older artist who often found Stieglitz and his family oppressive. The two artists frequently painted together at Stiegltiz’s summer house on Lake George and occasionally took excursions together. Engelhard’s paintings reflect O’Keeffe’s influence – flat areas of pure colour and sensuous curves are used to define the landscape. …

Despite a paralysing fear of heights, Engelhard became a premier mountain climber at the age of 20 and was the first female climber to ascend many of the peaks in the Canadian Rockies. Engelhard’s determination to overcome this specific fear evolved into a passion for the mountains that lasted throughout her lifetime…

Engelhard was also a writer and an accomplished photographer. In 1938 when she began living with Eaton Cromwell she stopped painting and together the couple pursued photography. While living in Switzerland they sold a number of their pictures to postcard companies. Few of Georgia Engelhard’s paintings are in existence today and when one does appear there is often a dispute about whether the canvas comes from O’Keefe’s hands or Engelhard’s.

Anonymous text. “Georgia Engelhard,” on the JWL Collection website [Online] Cited 05/01/2022. No longer available online

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portrait (9)
probably around 1921
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Alfred Stieglitz
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Dancing Trees
1922
Palladium print
Gift of Alfred Stieglitz
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Equivalent
1926
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Miss Georgia O’Keeffe
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“How to hold a moment, how to record something so completely, that all who see it will relive an equivalent of what has been expressed.”

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portrait (15)
1930
Gelatin silver print
The Alfred Stieglitz Collection – Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation and M. and M. Karolik Fund
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
House and Grape Leaves
1934
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Miss Georgia O’Keeffe
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) 'From the Shelton, Looking West' 1935-1936

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
From the Shelton, Looking West
1935-36
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Miss Georgia O’Keeffe
Photograph: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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Exhibition: ‘Alfred Stieglitz: the Lake George years’ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Exhibition dates: 17th June – 5th September, 2010

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) 'Ford V-8' 1935 from the exhibition 'Alfred Stieglitz: the Lake George years' at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, June - September, 2010

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Ford V-8
1935
Gelatin silver photograph
19.5 x 24.3cm
George Eastman House, part purchase and part gift from Georgia O’Keeffe

Many thankx to Susanne Briggs and the Art Gallery of New South Wales for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“… much has happened in photography that is sensational, but very little that is comparable with what Stieglitz did. The body of his work, the key set – I think – is the most beautiful photographic document of our time.”

Georgia O’Keeffe 1978

The photographs Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) took around his summer house at Lake George, New York state, USA after 1915 are considered a major departure and dramatically influenced the course of photography. The desire to build a specifically ‘American’ art led Stieglitz to explore the essential nature of photography, released from contrivances and from intervention in print and negative. “Photography is my passion. The search for truth my obsession,” he would write in 1921.

This major exhibition is the first in Australia of Stieglitz’s photographs. 150 are included and are amongst the very best Stieglitz ever printed. They are also the rarest. One third of the exhibition is being lent by the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, which holds ‘the key set’ – selected by his lover, muse and wife, the artist Georgia O’Keeffe, and deposited there after Stieglitz’s death.

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) ‘City of ambition’ 1911 from the exhibition 'Alfred Stieglitz: the Lake George years' at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, June - September, 2010

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
City of ambition
1911
Photogravure
33.9 x 26.0cm
George Eastman House, Museum purchase from Museum of Modern Art, New York

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) 'Ellen Koeniger' 1916 from the exhibition 'Alfred Stieglitz: the Lake George years' at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, June - September, 2010

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Ellen Koeniger
1916
Gelatin silver photograph
11.1 x 9.1cm
J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) 'Waldo Frank' 1920 from the exhibition 'Alfred Stieglitz: the Lake George years' at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, June - September, 2010

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Waldo Frank
1920
Palladium photograph
25.1 x 20.2cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Alfred Stieglitz Collection

Waldo David Frank was an American novelist, historian, political activist, and literary critic, who wrote extensively for The New Yorker and The New Republic during the 1920s and 1930s.

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Spiritual America
1923
Gelatin silver photograph
11.7 x 9.2cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art: the Alfred Stieglitz Collection 1949

‘Stieglitz’s mature photographs from the 1910s onwards are free from any sense that photography must refer to something outside of itself in order to express meaning,’ said Judy Annear, senior curator photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales.

‘Passionate and provocative; charismatic, verbose and intellectually voracious; a self described revolutionist and iconoclast with an unwavering belief in the efficacy of radical action; competitive, egotistical, narcissistic and at times duplicitous, but also endowed with a remarkable ability to establish a deep communion with those around him – these are but some of the adjectives that can be used to describe Alfred Stieglitz,’ said Sarah Greenough, senior curator of photographs, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Major loans are also coming from the J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and George Eastman House, Rochester amongst others.

The exhibition begins with a selection of Stieglitz’s photographs from the 1910s including those that he took at his gallery 291 in New York City of artists and collaborators, including O’Keeffe. Stieglitz was a superb photographic printer and dedicated to aesthetics in publishing. A number of the later editions (from 1911-1917) of his publication Camera work – described as the most beautiful journal in the world – are included.

Stieglitz’s portraits grew steadily in power in the 1910s and 20s, and continued to be a major part of his photographic practice. He would sometimes photograph his subjects over and over again and none more so than O’Keeffe, whom he met in 1916.

Stieglitz photographed O’Keeffe for the first time in 1917. He continued to photograph her from every angle, clothed and unclothed, indoors and out until his last photographs from 1936/1937. In all there are more than 300 photographs of O’Keeffe which convey all the nuances of their relationship in that 20-year period. A selection is included.

Stieglitz first visited Lake George in the 1870s with his parents. The visits slowed until the 1910s but from 1917 until his death he spent every summer there. Stieglitz’s ashes are buried at Lake George.

The photographs of people, buildings, landscapes and skies that Stieglitz took at Lake George form a collective portrait of a place which has not been rivalled in the history of photography worldwide for its subtlety of feeling expressed in the simplest of terms.

Stieglitz developed the idea for his cloud photographs in 1922 because he wanted to create images which carried the emotional impact of music and to disprove the idea being put about that he hypnotised his (human) subjects. The first title for the cloud photographs was simply Music: a sequence…; this was eventually superseded by Equivalent as Stieglitz believed that these photographs could exist as the visual equivalent to other forms of expression.

Stieglitz changed the course of photography worldwide and has influenced major figures in photography from Minor White to Robert Mapplethorpe, Max Dupain to Tracey Moffatt and Bill Henson.”

Press release from the Art Gallery of New South Wales website

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe: a portrait
1918
Platinum photograph
24.6 x 19.7cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum
Copyright J. Paul Getty Trust

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe
1920
Gelatin silver photograph
23.5 x 19.69cm
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Alfred Stieglitz Collection. Gift of Georgia O’Keeffe

“Stieglitz is too easily bundled in amongst a rush to the reductions of modernism and cubism, the time he inhabits and the new technology he is stretching make that almost inevitable. On looking at the images here it feels like a mistake to label him that simply. We can see hints of the abstract, the grids of Mondrian or the blocks of Braque, but his work is as human and as smudged as a fingerprint. It is this sense of flaw and serendipity is what makes him so different to photographers like Man Ray for Stieglitz seems to embrace the beauty of imperfection. The memorable works here inhabit a world of infinite shining gradations between black and white, they are expansive and open rather than reductive and finished, in doing this Stieglitz’s greatest innovation might be to take a static form and make it so intensely moving.”

John Matthews on his Art Kritique blog Sunday 15 August 2010 [Online] Cited 22/12/2019

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Self-portrait
1907, printed 1930
Gelatin silver photograph
24.8 x 18.4cm
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
From the Back Window – 291
1915
Platinum print
25.1 x 20.2cm (9 7/8 x 7 15/16 in.)
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949

From the Back Window – 291 is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1915. The picture was taken at night from a back window of his 291 gallery in New York. Its one of the several that he took that year from that window, including at a snowy Winter.

The night photograph depicts an urban cityscape of New York. The reigning darkness is leavened by several sources of artificial light. The background building is the 105 Madison Avenue, at the southeast corner of Madison and 30th Street, while the smaller building with the advertisements is 112 Madison Avenue.

Stieglitz seems to have taken inspiration from a recent exhibition of Cubist painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque at the 291 gallery, which would explain his interest in the geometrical forms and lines, but also of the 19th century photographers, like David Octavius Hill. He wrote then to R. Child Bailey: “I have done quite some photography recently. It is intensely direct. Portraits. Buildings from my back window at 291, a whole series of them, a few landscapes and interiors. All interrelated. I know nothing outside of Hill’s work which I think is so direct, and quite so intensely honest.” The picture also seems still reminiscent of Pictorialism, while being more in the straight photography style.

There are prints of this photograph at several public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and at the Williams College Museum of Art, in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Alfred Stiegitz (American, 1864-1946) 'The Steerage' 1907

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
The Steerage
1907
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Miss Georgia O’Keeffe

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Hodge Kirnon
1917
Palladium print
9 11/15 x 7 13/16 in
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949

The noted West Indian scholar and historian Hodge Kirnon leaning against a doorframe.

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe – Torso
1918
Gelatin silver print
23.6 x 18.8cm (9 5/16 x 7 3/8 in.)
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gift of Mrs. Alma Wertheim, 1928

Stieglitz took dozens of pictures of O’Keeffe’s body, including her hands and her nude torso. The photograph depicts her naked torso, seen from below, with her arms only partially visible and without showing her head. The Torso, with its uplifted arms and muscular thighs, has a sculptoric quality that seems influenced by Auguste Rodin, whose work Stieglitz knew well and had shown at the Photo-Secession.

The Torso was in the Stieglitz exhibition at the Anderson Galleries in New York, where he presented pictures of several parts of the body of O’Keeffe, and which had a particular impact. Herbert Seligmann wrote that “Hands, feet, hands and breasts, torsos, all parts and attitudes of the human body seen with a passion of revelation, produced an astonishing effect on the multitudes who wandered in and out of the rooms”.

A print of this picture sold for $1,360,000 at Sotheby’s New York, on 14 February 2006, making it the second most expensive price reached by a Stieglitz photograph.

There are prints of Torso at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., The Art Institute of Chicago, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Museé d’Orsay, in Paris.

Text from the Wikipedia website