Customer Reviews

Stieglitz: A Beginning Light

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If you are a Stieglitz follower and if you think that you have read all that there is to read about him, you are wrong..
Katherine Hoffman has come to the 'Stieglitz-Biography' late, and yet has produced a newly discovered Alfred Stieglitz. I was hesitant to purchase another 'A.S. Biography', but once I entered her work, I was smitten.
The history of a great artist needs a passionate eye and a fresh start and her view of his European journies and the intimacies of his relationship with his family and 'Artists' were given a renewed spirit and a kind passion in Katherine's voice.
She has given us new experiences in the selection of her 'images' and expanded Stieglitz's body of work for me.
As 'passionate' as Stieglitz was to the critical aspects of his work ,so too is the 'biographers' passion and admiration for the Artist, his Ambitions, the Art of his Photographs and his Philosophy - found page after page in her book.
I am happy that I took the step inside yet another Alfred Stieglitz Biography and yet saddened that this edition had to end so soon...
I look forward to a follow up on "A Beginning Light" with 'the adjoining years..'
I am certain that Ms. Katherine Hoffman has more to say.
Harve Sherman - collector

Hoffman follows Stieglitz from his earliest days, in the wake of the American Civil War, to his marriage to Emmeline and a growing obsession witrh photography and the avant-garde, fueled by Wagner's music and his legend as a fiercely independent artist at the birth of modernism. Too bad Emmy was a conventional type who didn't understand her husband's drive for perfection, and too bad that Stieglitz wasn't the world's greatest father to his only child, poor Kitty. It seems clear that for Stieglitz, he would not be happy with a conventional marriage and he became increasingly dependent on adulterous relations, including an affair with the wife of his protege Paul Strand. Hoffman promises to reveal more about Stieglitz in a second volume, including his marriage to painter Georgia O'Keeffe, but for now the book ends with the dissolution in 1917 of his famous gallery "291."

As in her books on Georgia O'Keeffe, Hoffman's specialty is tracing the influence on the artist of various other plastic arts and music. But this approach isn't especially illuminating. With Stieglitz, the comparisons to Wagner fall short of being able to tell us anything about the work itself (where they do not indeed distort it nearly beyond recognition). Hoffman is safer in analyzing individual photos by Stieglitz, but this analysis too often scratches only the surface, or even just the surface of the surface. Take this comment on Stieglitz's many photos of the toddler Kitty:

"The subtly colored images frequently show Kitty with her long wavy hair, often tied with a large ribbon, well dressed and holding flowers, leaves, or a plant. Stieglitz's association of his daughter with blooming plant forms suggests the traditional analogy between the female and the life cycles of nature." And that's it. You keep waiting for something more, but only the obvious ever seems to satisfy Dr. Hoffman. Well, that's not entirely fair, because she's a careful writer who has done a great deal of research, and some of her conclusions, if arguable, are plainly stated. Best of all is her ability to make connections, such as the kinship between Stieglitz and one of his gallery's artists, the Tarot goddess Pamela Colman Smith. Had Hoffman not pointed up the similarities between their work I would never have thought it.

This book presents material that I've seen nowhere else--including quite a few images that likely haven't been published before--but it's the worst-edited "academic" book I've ever seen. How could Yale University Press publish this without a careful proofreading? But set that aside, as the author has plenty of fresh observations (and more than a few forgettable ones, too) to go with a great collection of photographs.

A great introduction to the young Stieglitz with his wonderful early pictures. A fact filled book, only lacking a more engaging presentation. Ms. Hoffman's writing style is a bit dry, but the careful research on her subject shines through. Could have been five stars, but for her "academic objectivity" (as Pete Seeger refers to those not willing to sing at his concerts). Still, if you are interested in what made Stieglitz Stieglitz, then you should read this book, you won't be disappointed.

The word, "Pedestrian" hardly captures the quality of the writing in this book. "Wooden" comes closer, but the English language doesn't seem to have a word that adequately can describe how wretched Ms Hoffman's plodding account really is.

The book's only, barely redeeming features are some early, though not very well printed Stieglitz photographs, but many seem to be missing. Ms. Hoffman will go on and on about a Stieglitz photograph, describing the "triangular relationships" produced by this feature and the "horizontal orientation" that produces a sensation of "vastness" in the viewer. But when you riffle through the pages to see whether or not you get the "sensations" she's describing, you find that the photograph isn't in the book. In addition, the text seems to have been bowdlerized by the Yale University Press editors. For instance, on page 204 she quotes Stieglitz as writing, "On the contrary, the individual is free to follow their own light,..." I don't believe for a minute that Stieglitz, writing at the turn of the twientieth century, made that kind of grammatical error. This is PC at its worst!

What does it mean to be a "professor of Fine Arts?" This book more or less bears out the old saying that "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

All in all, this is a very disappointing book. It should have been much better than it is.