ISSN: 2471-6839 Cite this article: Tara Kohn, “Elevated: Along the Fringes of 291 Fifth Avenue” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 4, no. 2 (Fall 2018), https:// doi.org/10.24926/24716839.1657. Elevated: Along the Fringes of 291 Fifth Avenue Tara Kohn, Lecturer, Department of Comparative Cultural Studies, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff Threshold People In 1910, the photographer Anne Brigman snapped a portrait of Alfred Stieglitz leaning against a burlap-covered wall of his gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue (fig. 1). His thick eyebrows brush against the wire frames of his glasses, and his graying, unruly tresses tumble toward his ears and cast shadows across his forehead. His elbows, hidden beneath the folds of his overcoat, bend outward as his fingertips curl inward. These are the same hands that, seven years later, framed a photograph of the noted West Indian scholar and historian Hodge Kirnon leaning against a doorframe (fig. 2). In the portrait, the dark skin of Kirnon’s fingertips trace the white fabric of his shirt, and he tugs at his suspenders in a subtle gesture toward the menial job he had taken to support his intellectual and cultural work: to lift viewers from the restless sidewalks of Midtown Manhattan to the attic-level artistic center. Figs. 1, 2. Right: Anne W. Brigman, Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz at 291, 1910. Digital positive from the original gelatin silver negative, 7 x 5 in. George Eastman Museum, gift of William M. Nott; journalpanorama.org •
[email protected] • ahaaonline.org Kohn, “Elevated: Along the Fringes of 291 Fifth Avenue” Page 2 Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum.