Alfred Stieglitz

 

For these blog I researched a well known photography named Alfred Stieglitz who is said to be on of the most important contributors to the history of photography. He was born to Jewish Immigrants and the eldest of 6 children. In early 1890s he moved to Berlin and went to a technical high school in Berlin as a student of mechanical engineering (Technische Houchschule) where he was first exposed to photography while taking a photography course.   From then on involved with photography, first as a technical and scientific challenge and later an artistic one. He then came back to America where he wrote a lot about photography with various magazines like Camera Work. While his work as a photographer he said “My aim is increasingly to make my photographs look so much like photographs that unless one has eyes and sees, they won’t be seen – and still everyone will never forget having once looked at them.” I take this as he was someone who wanted his work to be remembered. After his travel from Europe he came back and introduced modern art to America and developed the idea of photography being a part of art. He was such an artist that he refused to do anything else but a photographer in life. The type of photography he takes was part of modernism: philosophical movement that came from transformations in the western world in the 19^th and 20^th century with the aim to break the traditional forms.

 

The bottom three photos are photos that show modernism, they show the transformations in the world from first using carriages and horses, then to ferry boats, then airplanes. The airplane one is my favorite  because the main subject is so small and deson't even take up a third of the space yet it is signifcant. I also really like it because it looks as if the plane is flying off the photo in a diagonal motion which I liked a lot.