Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage, 1907 (Source: J. Paul Getty Museum)Coming to the end of the deck,
Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage, 1907 (Source: J. Paul Getty Museum) Coming to the end of the deck, I stood alone. Looking down, there were men, women, children on the lower levels of the steerage. The scene fascinated me. A round straw hat. The funnel leaning left. The stairway leading right. White suspenders crossed on the back of a man below. A mass that cut into the sky, completing a triangle. I saw shapes related to one another. A picture of shapes, and underlying it, a new vision that held me. Stieglitz, Alfred (1942). “How The Steerage Happened”. Twice a Year (8–9): 175–178. Shapes related to one another, a new vision… with this photo, Stieglitz went from being one of the drivers of Pictorialism in America, to become the pioneer of the “straight photography”, a type of photography based on its own formal qualities (rejecting the imitation of painting, which had been in vogue in the last decades of the nineteenth century). A new vision for a modern world. As Picasso said “this photographer is working in the same spirit as I am” -- source link
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