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| The Photo-Secession | |
|---|---|
| Name | The Photo-Secession |
| Formation | 1902 |
| Founder | Alfred Stieglitz |
| Type | Artistic movement |
| Headquarters | New York City |
| Region served | United States |
The Photo-Secession was an early 20th‑century American photographic movement led by Alfred Stieglitz that promoted pictorialism and the recognition of photography as a fine art. The group organized exhibitions, published journals, and advocated for a subjective, painterly approach to photographic practice, influencing institutions such as the National Academy of Design, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. Members and associates included prominent artists, curators, and critics who engaged with transatlantic debates involving figures linked to the Royal Photographic Society, the Linked Ring, and the Camera Club of New York.
Stieglitz formed the organization in 1902 amid dialogues with patrons and artists associated with the Philadelphia Photographic Salon, the Camera Club of New York, and the Photo-Club de Paris. Early activities intersected with exhibitions at the National Arts Club and salons influenced by contacts at the Royal Photographic Society and the Linked Ring Brotherhood. Key events included exchanges with collectors and critics tied to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, and the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, while correspondence connected Stieglitz with European practitioners involved with the Düsseldorf school and the Société Française de Photographie.
Leadership centered on Alfred Stieglitz, who corresponded with and promoted artists such as Edward Steichen, Gertrude Käsebier, Clarence H. White, and Frances Benjamin Johnston. Other notable members and associates included F. Holland Day, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Paul Strand, Lewis Hine, Anne Brigman, Karl Struss, and Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr., who maintained ties with curators and institutions like Lewis F. Day, Francis »Frank» Lloyd Wright, and the Art Institute of Chicago. The group’s network extended to international figures such as Henri Cartier‑Bresson, Roger Fenton, Julia Margaret Cameron, and George Bernard Shaw through exhibition loans, critical reviews, and transatlantic patronage.
Photo‑Secession aesthetics emphasized manipulation for mood, soft focus, gum bichromate, platinum printing, and composition informed by painting and Symbolist currents. Stieglitz and colleagues debated values with contemporaries associated with the Bauhaus, the Vienna Secession, and the Pre‑Raphaelites, while responding to writings by John Ruskin, Walter Pater, and theories advanced at institutions like the Royal Academy and the École des Beaux‑Arts. The movement’s visual aims aligned with work by painters and poets such as James McNeill Whistler, Henri de Toulouse‑Lautrec, William Morris, and Stéphane Mallarmé, reflecting affinities with Symbolist exhibitions at the Salon des Indépendants and the Armory Show.
Stieglitz championed exhibitions at his Little Galleries (291) and published influential periodicals including Camera Work and Camera Notes, which featured portfolios, critical essays, and reproductions by members. The group arranged shows at the Albright Art Gallery, the National Academy of Design, Knoedler Gallery, and the Anderson Galleries, and engaged with collectors and critics linked to institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Contributors and reviewers included names associated with Harper & Brothers, The Dial, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and the Yale University Art Gallery, while exchanges with European journals connected the movement to L’Illustration and The Studio.
The movement helped elevate photography within museum collecting and academic study, influencing acquisitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Its advocacy shaped careers of photographers whose work appears alongside paintings by Édouard Manet, Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, and Gustav Klimt in public collections and retrospectives at the Tate Gallery, the National Gallery of Art, and the Musée d’Orsay. The Photo‑Secession’s debates about pictorialism and straight photography informed later developments associated with Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Minor White, and resonated in pedagogical programs at the Rhode Island School of Design, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Columbia University.
Internal disagreements, changing tastes favoring straight photography, and Stieglitz’s shifting priorities led to the group’s waning influence by the 1910s and formal dissolution in subsequent years. The rise of modernist exhibitions such as the Armory Show, the consolidation of institutions like the Museum of Modern Art under directors and curators associated with Alfred H. Barr Jr., and the ascendancy of documentary and f/64 aesthetics curtailed the movement’s centrality. Former members pursued individual careers intersecting with federal art projects, commercial photography, and academic appointments at universities including Harvard, Yale, and New York University, leaving a contested legacy in museum collections and photographic historiography.
Category:Art movements Category:Photography organizations Category:Alfred Stieglitz