Alfred Stieglitz: Camera Work

Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Photography & Video

Alfred Stieglitz: Camera Work Details

From Library Journal For 50 issues, Stieglitz carefully gathered, composed, edited, and produced Camera Work, a journal dedicated to a medium more technically established than artistically recognized. Roberts, curator of the Royal Photographic Society in Bath, England, has done a quietly effective job of editing prose pieces from Camera Work, offering her own essay assessing the role of both Stieglitz and his journal and assuring that page after page of sepia-toned reproductions march in the same sequence as originally published. Yet for all its dignity and potential significance to both an informed lay audience and scholars, this is a hefty little book that fails in format. It is a squat, thick, heavy paperback. The volume seems more a machinist's manual than an aesthetic delight to be enjoyed comfortably. For those fascinated by Stieglitz, excited by the beginnings of modern art, and eager to study text and visuals of the artistic ferment at the turn of the century, this comprehensive look at the world of the legendary Camera Work deserves better packaging. Recommended with reservations for larger photography collections.?David Bryant, New Canaan P.L., CTCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more Language Notes Text: English, French, German Read more

Reviews

Camera Work was the most important publication in the early development of modern photography. Camera Work was the first primarily pictoral periodical.Edited by the indefatigable Alfred Steiglitz, the publication was the voice of the important Photo-Secession, but operated independently of it. Through Camera Work, early aficionados of great photography were able to discover the works of the first geniuses in this field. Later the publication also introduced Americans to the works of Marin, Matisse, Picasso, and Cezanne.Please realize that I am rating this book for its value as a historical reference. This is not a coffee table book, and many of the images will not attract the casual observer. If you are looking for a book of beautiful and wonderfully reproduced photographs, this is not your book.Before going further, please also realize that this book contains many tasteful nudes and would be "R" rated as a motion picture.The book's strength is that it contains all of the illustrations (and even some of the advertisements) from the entire 50 issues of Camera Work. For most people, this book is the only way you can observe that work. Although many people have heard about Stieglitz's work in advocating photography, few have seen what an issue of Camera Work looked like. You will also benefit from seeing the essays that Stieglitz wrote about the photographers. These were done in New Yorker style and are very accessible variations on the essays often found in catalogues for exhibitions. In fact, Camera Work increasingly doubled as a summary of exhibitions at 291, Stieglitz's gallery.The book comes with a fine essay (in English, German, and French) that explains many valuable details about Camera Work.Stieglitz was very dedicated to quality and sought out the best reproduction processes for the images involved. Unfortunately, these reproductions as done for this volume will fall short of the expectations of most viewers. The pages are quite small, making many images appear differently than they were probably intended.Stieglitz liked photography that included a soft focus or the diffusion of light that fog and rain can provide. In many cases, these effects are enhanced by other techniques to make the resulting images more abstract. In this book's format, these images often don't look their best. In particular, it seemed to me that many of the images were overinked in this printing, which would create more obscurity than was intended by the artist.Here are my favorite photographic images from the book:Bartholome, 1903, Edward SteichenLetitia Felix, 1903, Clarence WhiteEly Cathedral, 1903, Frederick EvansStorm Light, 1904, Will CadbyIllustration to "Eben Holden," 1905, Clarence WhiteKatherine, 1905, Alfred StieglitzExperiment in Three-color Photography, 1906, Edward SteichenMrs. Julia Ward Howe, 1907, Sarah SearsThe Rudder, 1908, Alvin CoburnSpider-webs, 1908, Alvin CoburnStill Life [glass bowl with floating flowers], 1908, Baron A. de MeyerPortrait Group, 1912, H. Mortimer LambThe Balloon Man, 1912, Baron A. de MeyerEllen Terry, 1913, Julia Margaret CameronDryads, 1913, Annie BrigmanNew York, 1916, Paul StrandPhotograph [shadows on geometric objects], 1917, Paul StrandAfter you finish enjoying this remarkable collection, I suggest that you think about how the styles represented here have affected modern photographic methods and our concepts of photography. In a sense, these images are the dinosaur bones of modern photography.See the truth, the beauty, and the pain!

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