Camera Work - Legacy

Legacy

For most of its life Camera Work was universally praised by both photographers and critics. Here are some examples that appeared in photography magazines when Camera Work first appeared:

"When Camera Notes was at its height, it seemed impossible for it to be surpassed. We can only say that in this case it has been passed, that Stieglitz has out-Stieglitzed Stieglitz and that, in producing Camera Work he has beaten that record which he himself held, which no one else has ever approached."

"For Camera Work as a whole we have no words of praise too high, it stands alone; and of Mr. Alfred Stieglitz American photographers may well be proud. It is difficult to estimate how much he has done for the good of photography, working for years against opposition and without sympathy, and it is to his extraordinary capacity for work, his masterful independence which compels conviction, and his self-sacrificing devotion that we owe the beautiful work before us."

While Stieglitz definitely deserves this praise, he should not be seen without fault. In spite of Stieglitz’s initial statement that Camera Work "owes allegiance to no organization or clique", in the end it was primarily a visual showcase for his work and that of his close friends. Of the 473 photographs published in Camera Work during its fifteen-year existence, 357 were the work of just fourteen photographers: Stieglitz, Steichen, Frank Eugene, Clarence H. White, Alvin Langdon Coburn, J. Craig Annan, Hill & Adamson, Baron Adolf de Meyer, Heinrich Kühn, George Seeley, Paul Strand, Robert Demachy, Gertrude Käsebier and Anne Brigman. The remaining 116 photographs came from just thirty-nine other photographers.

A collection of 23 issues of Camera Work was appraised in Philadelphia on a 2007 episode of Antiques Roadshow with an estimated worth of $60,000 to $90,000. As of 2012, individual issues routinely sell for $3,000 to $10,000 depending upon the number and quality of the photogravures in the issue.