Alfred Stieglitz Essay -- Biography Biographies Essays

Alfred StieglitzWorks Cited missingAlfred Stieglitz was an influential photographer who spent his life fighting for the recognition of picture taking as a valid craft form. He was a pioneering photographer, editor program and gallery owner who played pivotal role in formation and shaping modernism in the join States. (Lowe 23). He took pictures in a time when photography was considered as only a scientific tenuity and not an art. As the controversy over the art value of photography became widespread, Stieglitz began to fight for the recognition of his chosenmedium. This battle would last his whole life. Edward Stieglitz, military chaplain of Alfred, was born in Germany in 1833. He grew up on a farm, loved nature, and was an artist at heart. Legend has it that, independent and strong willed, Edward Stieglitz ran aside from home at the age of sixteen beca utilise his mother insisted on upon starching his shirt after he had begged her not to (Lowe 23). Edward would later meet Hedwig Warner and they would have their depression son, Alfred. Alfred was the first of six born to his dad Edward and mom Hedwig. As a child Alfred was remembered as a boy with thick black hair, rangy dark eyes, pale fine skin,a delicately modeled oral cavity with a strong chin (Peterson 34). In 1871 theStieglitz family lived at 14 eastern 60th street in Manhattan. No buildings stoodbetween Central pose and the Stieglitz family home. As Stieglitz got olderhe started to show interest in photography, pecker every photo he couldfind on his bedroom wall. It wasnt until he got older that his photographycuriosity begin to take charge of his life.Stieglitz formally started photography at the age of nineteen, during his firstyears at the Berlin engineering school School. At this time photography was in itsinfancy as an art form. Alfred learned the fine humanities of photography bywatching a local photographer in Berlin working in the stores dark room. aft(prenominal) making a few p ictures of his room and himself, he enrolled in aphotochemistry course. This is where his photography career would begin.His earliest public recognition came from England and Germany. It began in1887 when Stieglitz win the first of his many first prizes in a competition.The judge who gave him the allot was Dr. P.H. Emerson, then the mostwidely known English advocate of photography as an art (Doty 23). Dr.Emerson later wrot... ...raphers. At the turn of the century, a natural class of creative individuals, called painter-photographer emerged. This group fulfilled Stieglitz s day-dream for picturalphotography. Its presence provided the movement with individuals whowere trained in the established arts and who legitimized the artistic claims of pictorial photography by the fact that they were willing touse the photographic medium. The very term painter photographer wasmade up in reference to Frank Eugene who worked simultaneously withStieglitz in media for a decade. Eugene attend a German fine artsacademy, and painted theatrical portraits of the United States. In 1889 hemounted a solo exhibition of pictorial photographs at the Camera Club ofNew York, which, pointedly, was reviewed in Camera Notes as paintingphotography (Norman 23). In conclusion Stieglitzs fight for photography genuine into new ideas forfuture generations. He continued to make his own experiments and to keep the work of others also breaking new ground. The magazines heedited, like the galleries he founded, swiftly became dynamic points ofcontact between artist and public and a battleground for new ideas.