Customer Reviews

Alfred Stieglitz: Camera Work

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Please realize that I am rating this book for its value as a historical reference.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 Steichen

Letitia Felix, 1903, Clarence White

Ely Cathedral, 1903, Frederick Evans

Storm Light, 1904, Will Cadby

Illustration to "Eben Holden," 1905, Clarence White

Katherine, 1905, Alfred Stieglitz

Experiment in Three-color Photography, 1906, Edward Steichen

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, 1907, Sarah Sears

The Rudder, 1908, Alvin Coburn

Spider-webs, 1908, Alvin Coburn

Still Life [glass bowl with floating flowers], 1908, Baron A. de Meyer

Portrait Group, 1912, H. Mortimer Lamb

The Balloon Man, 1912, Baron A. de Meyer

Ellen Terry, 1913, Julia Margaret Cameron

Dryads, 1913, Annie Brigman

New York, 1916, Paul Strand

Photograph [shadows on geometric objects], 1917, Paul Strand

After 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!