Stieglitz and the Clouds

Posted on November 11, 2003 in Photography

Modern art historians prefer to overlook Alfred Stieglitz’s proletarian impulses. Sentences in articles about the American master often include a phrase about how “he promoted photography as a means of artistic expression”. They leave out, however, the additional words “available to everyone“.

Every time Stieglitz introduced a revolution in photography that made it accessible to the common man and woman, art critics would deny it’s portability to the mind of the ordinary human being. When he proved the use of the hand camera as a tool for photographic art, critics insisted that his “special vision” made “The Terminal” and similar subjects compelling beyond what ordinary people could achieve.

When he grew frustrated that his proofs of the accessibility of photography kept being rejected, he abandoned his portraiture studies (which included this picture of Georgia O’Keefe) to point his camera at the clouds, a subject that no one could deny was there for everyone.

And yet, by truncating Stieglitz’s statements of artistic purpose, the critics have almost buried his populist manifesto for photography.

Every now and then, on a pure day, I remember Stieglitz’s revolutionary zeal. Armed with my simple digital camera, I direct my lens towards the sky and pick out the clouds. When I see the photos of autumn leaves or urban scenes or any photograph not turned out on a mill, I think of the man who turned to the People and said “This Art is Open to You. Here, Take a Camera and Show Us What You See.”

Every time you photograph a cloud, murmur his name like a prayer and thank him. He knew you could do it.