Camera Work - Background

Background

At the start of the 20th century Alfred Stieglitz was the single most important figure in American photography. He had been working for many years to raise the status of photography as a fine art by writing numerous articles, creating exhibitions, exhibiting his own work and, especially by trying to influence the artistic direction of the highly important Camera Club of New York. He was not successful in the latter, and as a result by the spring of 1902 he was both frustrated and exhausted. He had spent the past five years as editor of the Camera Club's journal Camera Notes, where his efforts to promote photography as a fine art form were regularly challenged by the older, more conservative members of the Club who thought photography was nothing more than a technical process. Rather than continue to battle against these challenges, he resigned as editor of Camera Notes and spent the summer at his home in Lake George, New York, thinking about what he could do next.

His close friends and fellow photographers, led by Joseph Keiley, encouraged him to carry out his dream and publish a new magazine, one that would be independent of any conservative influences. It did not take him long to come up with a new plan. In August, 1902, he printed a two-page prospectus "in response to the importunities of many serious workers in photographic fields that I should undertake the publication of an independent magazine devoted to the furtherance of modern photography." He said he would soon launch a new journal that would be "the best and most sumptuous of photographic publications" and that it would published entirely by himself, "owing allegiance only to the interests of photography." He called the new journal Camera Work, a reference to the phrase in his prospectus statement in which he meant to distinguish artistic photographers like himself from the old-school technicians with whom he had fought for many years. To emphasize the fact that this was an independent journal every cover would proclaim "Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly, Edited and Published by Alfred Stieglitz, New York".