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Alfred Stieglitz
Stieglitz in 1902 by Gertrude Käsebier

Today is the birthday of Alfred Stieglitz (Hoboken, New Jersey; January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946 New York City); photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form.  In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century, where he introduced many avant-garde European artists to the U.S.

For several years he had known Emmeline Obermeyer, who was the sister of his close friend and business associate Joe Obermeyer.  On 16 November 1893, when she turned twenty and Stieglitz was twenty-nine, they married in New York City.  Stieglitz later wrote that he did not love Emmy, as she was known, when they were first married and that their marriage was not consummated for at least a year.  He indicated that their marriage was one of financial advantage for him (she had inherited money from her father, a wealthy brewery owner) at a time when his own father had lost a great deal of money in the stock market.  He quickly regretted his brash decision to marry as he found out that Emmy could not begin to match his own artistic and cultural interests.

In January 1916, Stieglitz was shown a portfolio of drawings by a young artist named Georgia O’Keeffe.  Stieglitz was so taken by her art that without meeting O’Keeffe or even getting her permission to show her works he made plans to exhibit her work at 291.  The first that O’Keeffe heard about any of this was from another friend who saw her drawings in the gallery in late May of that year.  She finally met Stieglitz after going to 291 and chastising him for showing her work without her permission.  Stieglitz was immediately attracted to her both physically and artistically.  O’Keeffe did not immediately return the interest.

Soon thereafter O’Keeffe met Paul Strand, and her physical and artistic attraction focused on him.  She then returned to her home in Texas, and for several months she and Strand exchanged increasingly romantic letters.  When Strand told his friend Stieglitz about his new yearning, Stieglitz responded by telling Strand about his own infatuation with O’Keeffe. Gradually Strand’s interest waned, and Stieglitz’s escalated.  By the summer of 1917 he and O’Keeffe were writing each other “their most private and complicated thoughts”, and it was clear that something very intense was developing.

The year 1917 marked the end of an era in Stieglitz’s life and the beginning of another.  It was also clear to him that his marriage to Emmy was over. He had finally found “his twin”, and nothing would stand in his way of the relationship he had wanted all of his life.

During the previous eighteen months Stieglitz and O’Keeffe had been writing to each other with increasing passion and seeing each other whenever possible.  In early June, O’Keeffe moved to New York after Stieglitz promised he would provide her with a quiet studio where she could paint.  They were inseparable from the moment she arrived, and within a month he took the first of many nude photographs of her.  He chose to do this at his family’s apartment while his wife Emmy was away, but she returned while their session was still in progress.  Emmy told him to stop seeing her or get out.  Stieglitz did not hesitate; he left and immediately found a place in the city where he and O’Keeffe could live together.  By mid-August when they visited Oaklawn “they were like two teenagers in love.  Several times a day they would run up the stairs to their bedroom, so eager to make love that they would start taking their clothes off as they ran.”

Stieglitz filed for divorce almost immediately.  Due to legal delays caused by Emmy and her brothers, it would be six more years before the divorce was finalized.  During this period Stieglitz and O’Keeffe continued to live together.  She was relatively free-spirited and out-going with Stieglitz and his friends, but she needed solitude for weeks or months at a time when she focused on painting or creating.  This arrangement worked well with Stieglitz’s own lifestyle, and he used the times when she was away to concentrate on his photography and on his continued promotion of modern art.

One of the most important things that O’Keeffe provided for Stieglitz was the muse he had always wanted.  He photographed O’Keeffe obsessively between 1918 and 1925 in what was the most prolific period in his entire life.  During this period he produced more than 350 mounted prints of O’Keeffe that portrayed a wide range of her character, moods and beauty. He shot many close-up studies of parts of her body, especially her hands either isolated by themselves or near her face or hair.  They remain one of the most dynamic and intimate records of a single individual in the history of art.

In the catalog for a 1921 show, Stieglitz made his famous declaration: “I was born in Hoboken. I am an American. Photography is my passion. The search for Truth my obsession.”  What is less known is that he conditioned this statement by following it with these words:

“PLEASE NOTE: In the above STATEMENT the following, fast becoming “obsolete”, terms do not appear: ART, SCIENCE, BEAUTY, RELIGION, every ISM, ABSTRACTION, FORM, PLASTICITY, OBJECTIVITY, SUBJECTIVITY, OLD MASTERS, MODERN ART, PSYCHOANALYSIS, AESTHETICS, PICTORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY, DEMOCRACY, CEZANNE, “291”, PROHIBITION. The term TRUTH did creep in but it may be kicked out by any one.”

In the summer of 1923, O’Keeffe once again took off for the seclusion of the Southwest, and for a while Stieglitz was alone with Beck Strand at Lake George.  He took a series of nude photos of her, and soon he became infatuated with her.  They had a brief physical affair before O’Keeffe returned in the fall.  O’Keeffe could tell what had happened, but since she did not see Stieglitz’s new lover as a serious threat to their relationship she let things pass.  Six years later she would have her own affair with Beck Strand in New Mexico.

In 1924 Stieglitz’s divorce was finally approved by a judge, and within four months he and O’Keeffe married.  It was a small, private ceremony at Marin’s house, and afterward the couple went back home.  There was no reception, festivities or honeymoon.  O’Keeffe said later that they married in order to help soothe the troubles of Stieglitz’s daughter Kitty, who at that time was being treated in a sanatorium for depression and hallucinations.  The marriage did not seem to have any immediate effect on either Stieglitz or O’Keeffe; they both continued working on their individual projects as they had before.  For the rest of their lives together, their relationship was, as biographer Benita Eisler characterized it, “a collusion … a system of deals and trade-offs, tacitly agreed to and carried out, for the most part, without the exchange of a word. Preferring avoidance to confrontation on most issues, O’Keeffe was the principal agent of collusion in their union.”

In the coming years O’Keeffe would spend much of her time painting in New Mexico, while Stieglitz rarely left New York except for summers at Lake George.  O’Keeffe later said “Stieglitz was a hypochondriac and couldn’t be more than 50 miles from a doctor.”

In 1927 a young woman named Dorothy Norman came to the gallery to look at works by Marin, and once again Stieglitz became infatuated with a much younger woman.  She began volunteering for mundane tasks at the gallery, and soon she found she was returning Stieglitz’s attention.  By the next year, when Stieglitz was sixty-four and she twenty-two, they both declared their love for each other.

For most of the past year O’Keeffe had been dealing with bouts of illness or secluded at Lake George painting, and she and Stieglitz had seen each other only intermittently.  She knew of her husband’s interest in Norman but thought it was just another of his infatuations.  Having struggled with artistic roadblocks for many months she felt she needed a major change of some sort, so when Mabel Dodge invited her to come to Santa Fe for the summer O’Keeffe told Stieglitz that she had to go in order to be able to create again.  Stieglitz took advantage of her time away to begin photographing Norman, and he began teaching her the technical aspects of printing as well.  Within a short time they became lovers, but even after their physical affair diminished a few years later they continued to work together whenever O’Keeffe was not around until Stieglitz died in 1946.

In the summer of 1946 Stieglitz suffered a fatal stroke.  He remained in a coma long enough for O’Keeffe to finally return home.  When she got to his hospital room Dorothy Norman was there with him.  She left immediately, and O’Keeffe was with him when he died.  According to his wishes, a simple funeral was held with only twenty of his closest friends and family in attendance.  Stieglitz was cremated, and O’Keeffe and his niece Elizabeth Davidson took his ashes to Lake George.  O’Keeffe never revealed exactly where she distributed them, saying only “I put him where he could hear the water.”

Gallery

georgia o’keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe

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  The Hand of Man, 1902
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  Katherine, 1905
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  Miss S.R., 1905
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  Dirigible, 1910
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  Old and New New York, 1910
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  A Snapshot: Paris, 1911 (one of two with same title)
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  A Snapshot: Paris, 1911 (one of two with same title)
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  Ellen Koeniger, Lake George, 1916.
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  Georgia O’Keeffe, Hands, 1918