Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946): photography and modernity

The Steerage, 1907

"There were men and women and children on the lower deck of the steerage.... I longed to escape from my surroundings and join them.... A round straw hat, the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right.... round shapes of iron machinery... I saw a picture of shapes and underlying that, the feeling I had about life..."

source: http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/stieglit.htm

Portrait of Georgia O' Keefe, 1918

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Group f/64 Manifesto (1932)

Ansel Adams by Dorothea Lange Group f/64 Manifesto The name of this Group is derived from a diaphragm number of the photographic lens. It signifies to a large extent the qualities of clearness and definition of the photographic image which is an important element in the work of members of this Group. The chief object of the Group is to present in frequent shows what it considers the best contemporary photography of the West; in addition to the showing of the work of its members, it will include prints from other photographers who evidence tendencies in their work similar to that of the Group. Group f/64 is not pretending to cover the entire of photography or to indicate through its selection of members any deprecating opinion of the photographers who are not included in its shows. There are great number of serious workers in photography whose style and technique does not relate to the metier of the Group. Group f/64 limits its members and invitational names to those worke...

Mission Héliographique, 1851

Roman Arch at Orange], 1851 Édouard Baldus (French, born Prussia, 1813–1889) Salted paper print from paper negative 35.3 x 26.2 cm "In 1851, the Commission des Monuments Historiques, an agency of the French government, selected five photographers to make photographic surveys of the nation's architectural patrimony. These Missions Héliographiques, as they were called, were intended to aid the Paris-based commission in determining the nature and urgency of the preservation and restoration of work required at historic sites throughout France. The French rail network was still in its infancy and many of the commissioners had never visited the monuments in their care; photography promised a record of such sites that would be produced more quickly and accurately than the architectural drawings on which they had previously relied. " Malcolm Daniel Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Source: Mission Héliographique, 1851 | Thematic Essay | Heilb...

Hercules Florence, the isolated inventor of photography

Hercule Florence, self-portrait, c. 1875 source: http://www.mnemocine.com.br/fotografia/historia_foto.htm "Antoine Hercule Romuald Florence (1804–March 27, 1879) was a French-Brazilian painter and inventor, known as the isolate inventor of photography in Brazil, three years before Daguerre (but six years after Nicéphore Niépce), using the matrix negative/positive. According to Kossoy, who examined Florence's notes, he referred to his process, in French, as photographie in 1834, at least four years before John Herschel coined the English word photography." ( from: Hercules Florence - Wikipedia article ) "The notion of simultaneous invention - that two or more people can develop the same concept at about the same time - was mentioned by Florence and by another of photography's pioneer, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877)" observes M. W. Marien : "Simultaneous invention makes it difficult to construct a linear chronology of photography." ( Marien, M...

Introduction to the History of Photography

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