Alfred Stieglitz's Equivalents
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© COPYRIGHT by Carolyn Russo 2020 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED In Memory of my beloved friends Gregory K. H. Bryant, Herman L. Ross, and Chheang Por Van who have “slipped the surly bonds of earth” during the course of this thesis project. ALFRED STIEGLITZ’S EQUIVALENTS: LANDSCAPE IN THE AVIATION AGE BY Carolyn Russo ABSTRACT Between the years 1922 and 1935, American photographer Alfred StieglitZ (1864–1946) photographed over 300 images of clouds from his family’s property at Lake George in upstate New York. About an hour’s drive north of Albany, Lake George experienced highly changeable weather systems and, so, was a fitting site for this extensive series, known as the Equivalents. This thesis focuses on Set XX (1929), a sequence of nine photographs. Whereas a few sets include poplar trees or an indication of the ground, this set focuses almost exclusively on the sky. The clouds themselves are unnaturally angled to the un-pictured horiZon and—from photograph to photograph––they shift diagonally on their vertical axis. Scholars consider the Equivalents StieglitZ’s most important late work and have read the images either symbolically or formally, but they have not considered the specific understanding of clouds in the early twentieth-century America. Reading Set XX in relation to developments in meteorology and aviation in the 1920s, this thesis argues that the photographs represent the experience of flight. Throughout his career, StieglitZ worked to champion photography as art, and ironically, drawing upon science enabled him to rival the aesthetic of landscape painting. Whereas nineteenth-century landscape paintings prioritiZed the horiZon line and pictured their subject from a terrestrial perspective, StieglitZ used aeronautic thinking to picture humanity’s ascension into the sky. By invoking and reimagining the genre of landscape, StieglitZ posited photography as equivalent or perhaps even superior to painting. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I attribute this thesis to the encouragement and support of my art history advisor Dr. Nicole Elder in the graduate art history program at American University. The concept for this thesis stemmed from a seminar paper and without her support, it would have remained an unpublished paper. I thank my Thesis Research Seminar professors Dr. Joanne Allen and Dr. Andrea Pearson, my second reader Dr. Jordan Amirkhani and Dr. Juliet Bellow for their encouragement, reviews and recommendations. To my colleagues at American University and especially Michael Quituisaca, thank you for your support. I’m indebted to the scholarly research of Dr. Sarah Greenough on Alfred StieglitZ and for her publication of her Ph.D. dissertation Alfred Stieglitz’s Photographs of Clouds, The Key Set–Volume I & II: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs, and also the published letters between Alfred StieglitZ and Georgia O’Keeffe in My Faraway One. At the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, I thank senior leadership members Dr. Ellen Stofan, Chris Browne, Dr. Peter Jakab, and leadership in the Aeronautics Department Russell Lee and Dr. Jeremy Kinney. Special thanks to Chris Cottrill and Phil Edwards at the Smithsonian Library of the National Air and Space Museum for locating resources for this study. Many thanks to my Smithsonian colleagues and fellows, especially Barbara Brennan, Dorothy Cochrane, Dr. Martin Collins, Dr. Tom C. Crouch, Dr. David DeVorkin, Caroline Johnson, Dr. Valerie Neal, Claire Rasmussen, Dr. Matt Shindell, Diane Tedeschi, and Michael Tuttle. To my sons Maxwell and Jack Craddock, thank you for your understanding, love, and support on yet another project. Special thanks to my parents Joan Russo, John Russo, Kate Russo, and to my family and friends Eva, Fred, and Cora Eberhard, Vincent and Aimee Russo, Bob Craddock, Thanh Dang, Ramsey Gorchev, Reena Jehle, David Kressler, Christina DiMeglio-LopeZ, Lissa Masters, EliZabeth Pleeter, Anna Potts, Ana Schwar, and Emily Zaino. iii iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ......................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1 SPECTATORS OF THE SKY ..................................................................... 5 CHAPTER 2 REIMAGINING THE LANDSCAPE ........................................................ 25 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 43 ILLUSTRATIONS ....................................................................................................................... 45 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................... 48 v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: Alfred StieglitZ, Equivalents: Set XX, No. 1, 1929, gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. .................................................................................................. 45 Figure 2: Alfred StieglitZ, Equivalents: Set XX, No. 2, 1929, gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. .................................................................................................. 45 Figure 3: Alfred StieglitZ, Equivalents: Set XX, No. 3, 1929, gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. .................................................................................................. 45 Figure 4: Alfred StieglitZ, Equivalents: Set XX, No. 4, 1929, gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. .................................................................................................. 45 Figure 5: Alfred StieglitZ, Equivalents: Set XX, No. 5, 1929, gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. .................................................................................................. 45 Figure 6: Alfred StieglitZ, Equivalents: Set XX, No. 6, 1929, gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. .................................................................................................. 45 Figure 7: Alfred StieglitZ, Equivalents: Set XX, No. 7, 1929, gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. .................................................................................................. 45 Figure 8: Alfred StieglitZ, Equivalents: Set XX, No. 8, 1929, gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. .................................................................................................. 45 Figure 9: Alfred StieglitZ, Equivalents: Set XX, No. 9, 1929, gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. .................................................................................................. 45 Figure 10: Alfred StieglitZ, Winter on Fifth Avenue, 1893, photogravure (from Camera Work 12, October 1905, pl. 2) .......................................................................................................... 45 Figure 11: Alfred StieglitZ, Spring Showers, 1900/1901, photogravure (from Camera Work 36, October 1911, pl. 16) ........................................................................................................ 45 Figure 12: Alfred StieglitZ, In the New York Central Yards, 1903, photogravure (from Camera Work 20, October 1907, pl. 3) ........................................................................................... 45 Figure 13: Alfred StieglitZ, City of Ambition, 1910, photogravure (from Camera Work 36, October 1911, pl. 1) .......................................................................................................... 45 Figure 14: Alfred StieglitZ, A Dirigible, 1910, photogravure (from Camera Work 36, October 11, pl. 8) .................................................................................................................................. 46 Figure 15: Alfred StieglitZ, The Aeroplane, 1910, photogravure (from Camera Work 36, October 11, pl. 7) ............................................................................................................................ 46 Figure 16: Alexander McAdie, Alto Cumuli, ca. late 1920s, in Alexander McAdie, Clouds (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1930), Plate XL, unpaginated. .. 46 vi Figure 17: Alexander McAdie, Fair Weather Cumuli, ca. late 1920s, in Alexander McAdie, Clouds (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1930), Plate XIII, unpaged. ............................................................................................................................ 46 Figure 18: Alto-Cumulus, late 1920s, in Whatham, Richard. Meteorology: For Aviator & Layman (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1930), 86. ..................................... 46 Figure 19: Airplane Observation Flight, U.S. Weather Bureau .................................................... 46 Figure 20: U.S. Air Service, American Expeditionary Force (AEF) Aerial Photo mosaic Brexbach River between Sayn and Grenzau, Germany 10-2-19-11A.M. 3500m-52cm Lens, 91st Squadron, Photo Section No. 2. ......................................................................