Author Description

In 1924, forty-one years after he was introduced to photography as an engineering student in Berlin, Alfred Stieglitz gathered together a group of his photographs and presented them to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The bequest - the first group of photographs by one artist to enter an American museum - was a landmark in the history of photography and a triumph for Stieglitz, who had worked throughout his life for the acceptance of photography as an art form. In 1950, after his death, Georgia O'Keeffe, with the intention of matching the caliber of those Stieglitz had chosen, added forty-two more prints so that the collection would include the entire chronological range of his work. This superb volume, originally published in 1965, represents the entire classic collection, which is considered the finest, most highly distilled, and most personal collection of Stieglitz's work. Included are portraits, the earliest photographs made by night and in the rain, fifteen breathtaking prints of O'Keeffe, five prints from the famous "Equivalents" series, and eloquent late prints of New York City and Lake George. These sixty-two plates - reproduced actual size and printed duotone in several inks to give the sense of the originals - comprise a unique survey of fifty years of Stieglitz's art.