Picture this: In 1911 Alfred Stieglitz installed the first United States show of Pablo Picasso’s work at Stieglitz’ gallery “291″. Besides his own purchase of one piece, nothing else sold. They were $25 each.
And the reviews? Well… you can see for yourself that Stieglitz was the laughing stock of the Big Apple – here’s an excerpt of the review that ran in the New York Globe:
“The display is the most extraordinary combination of extravagance and absurdity that New York has yet to be inflicted with, and goodness knows it has had many these two seasons past. Any sane criticism is entirely out of the question; any serious analysis would be vain. The results suggest the most violent wards of an asylum for maniacs, the craziest emanations of a disordered mind, the gibberings of a lunatic!” (-Arthur Hoeber)
If you are a member of the fine art photography community in Maine, or in the world, or actually if you are a member of the human race, you know what a bad day can be like. (I’ll never sell another photograph. Nobody cares except mom and even she keeps asking me if I’ve sold a photograph recently. I blasted out my newest photograph and nobody responded. If I died, no one would notice, etc…)
Well, I bought a book at the Portland Museum of Art a couple of weeks ago titled “HOW TO READ A PHOTOGRAPH – Lessons from Master Photographers” by Ian Jeffrey. If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you know the subject I’m most passionate about is photography history so I’m an easy mark for any book like this.
So today I’m up to Stieglitz. Stieglitz definitely had more than his share of bad days. Here are some more samples, most of which are in this book:
In 1890, Stieglitz returned to the US after 9 years in Germany, etc… and became deeply depressed. (Well, who can blame him, considering the wide gulf with respect to “culture” between European aesthetics and the wild and woolly go-go “let’s make a million bucks” sentiments of the exploding young United States of America?) But here’s where it gets interesting for me and everyone else in the world who cares about photography: In 1892 he was wandering around NYC with one of those newfangled “hand cameras” and although they were widely disparaged as something no serious photographer would use, Stieglitz found them perfect for taking unposed, instinctive street images. He happened by the Terminal-Astor House one wintery bleak day and saw a driver tending to his steaming street-car horses and in that moment, Stieglitz says “America was saved for me. I was no longer alone.” He could express his deepest emotions through his camera he realized upon viewing this scene. He could connect with this place. And he took one of the world’s most iconic photographs and one of my very, very favorites, “The Terminal”:
This photograph (cropped from the original 1892 image as Stieglitz never stopped trying to reach perfection with his work, even 40 years later) pulses with life and emotion, not to mention brilliance of design and rendering.
Then, Stieglitz had joined the “Society of Amateur Photographers” in 1891, but it turns out that photography was losing traction as a hobby and when it looked like the club was going to turn itself into a bicycle club, Stieglitz moved on. Another very bad day. But he joined the “Camera Club of New York” and founded a periodical called “Camera Notes“, which in turn prompted him to found another periodical “Camera Work“ which became a seminal publication for the future of fine art photography. (I wrote way back that MECA (Maine College of Art) actually has many of these issues in their rare books room and you can make an appointment to see them – students used to be able to check them in the 70′s and some of the pages are, well, “missing”.)
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Okay, three bad days that turned out to be turning points for Stieglitz and the rest of us, unknowingly. Hmm… is there a lesson here?
A very bad day for Stieglitz, and everyone else for that matter, was the day American entered into war with Germany. He was German. He loved the United States, his new home. The public attention turned to war and “291″ closed in 1917. But he didn’t stay down: In 1925 he opened the “Intimate Gallery” and then in 1930 held court at “An American Place”, the latter being one of the most important springboards for the future generation of photographers.
Successful people have one thing in common always: they stick to it and keep going. You can change the world that way. Or at the very least and perhaps most importantly, your world.
Bill Clinton spent a lot of his time reading about past US Presidents and how they operated. He knew that when you become a star, or a leader, you inevitably hit a lot of brick walls. But the important thing here is not to listen to those sitting at the bottom of the wall telling you that it’s no use, there’s no way over, that it can’t be done. Many considered Alfred Stieglitz to be an ego-centric know-it-all and a fool for his taste in art. But he didn’t listen. He was too busy scaling walls and changing the course of history for the rest of us.
Hands, 1918, Alfred Stieglitz
