Alfred Stieglitz Biography

Alfred Stieglitz was a photographer who promoted the modernist movement in art and almost single-handedly altered how photography was perceived as an art form. Although the rise in quality and availability of technology means that almost everyone is an amateur photographer today, the medium was still relatively new and unexplored when Stieglitz began his career. His extensive writings, gallery showings and artistic efforts, put photography on the map of fine art and turned photographs into something worthy of being hung in an art gallery, rather than a mere inartistic way to preserve images. Obsessive and driven in his personal life as well as his career, he had a reputation for being consistently infatuated with younger women and had several affairs, including a late in life marriage to famous painter Georgia O'Keefe. His own photography often focuses on the softer and more natural ephemera of the hard and brutal rise of American industry, using subjects like snow and steam to quite literally soften the hard edges of industrial scenes. Although his own photography is respected as meaningful art in itself, his most enduring legacy is the effort he put towards changing public perception of photography and clearing a path for photography to be viewed as fine art.