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Alfred Stieglitz, Camera Work, and the Organizational Roots of The CanadianReview of AmericanStudies/Revue canadienne d'?ttdes am•ricaines Volume28, Number2, 1998, pp. 37-79 37 "The Safenessof StandingAlone": Alfred Stieglitz,Camera Work, and the OrganizationalRoots of theAmerican Avant-Garde J.M. Mancini The SecessionistIdea is neither the servant nor the product of a medium. It is a spirit.Let us sayit is the Spiritof the Lamp;the old and discolored,the too frequentlydespised, the too often discarded lamp of honesty;honesty of aim,honesty of self-expression,honesty of revolt againstthe autocracyof convention.The Photo-Secessionis not the keeperof thisLamp, but lights it whenit may[.] ("TheEditors' Page," Camera Work 18 (April1907), 37) The Secessionistscare little for popularapproval, insisting upon works, notfaith, and believing that their share having been done in producing thework, the public must now do the rest. A fewfriends, and these of understandingmind, a fewtrue appreciators, this is all theyexpect and all theydesire. (Hartmann 1904, 47) Canadian Reviexv of American Sin&es 38 Revue canadienne d'•t•Mes ambricaines Stieglitz,"Seer" and Organizer By manyaccounts, modern art arrivedon Americanshores sometime after 1905,due in largepart to theefforts of photographerAlfred Stieglitz. If the 1913Armory Show (and its peevishpublic reception) marked modernism's officialAmerican coming-out party, Stieglitz's intimate exhibits of worksby Rodin, Matisse,and Picassobetween 1905 and 1912 servedas the new art's formalletter of introductionto a smallerand morepowerful viewersh•p (Dijkstra1969, Homer 1977, Zilczer 1985). Not merelyan importerbut an artistin his own right,Stieglitz has also been widely creditedwith trans- formingphotography into one of theprimary venues for modernistexperi- mentationin theUnited States (Orvell 1989;Haines 1982), • a transformation whichparallelled Frank Lloyd Wright's drive in architecturetowards a ver- nacularAmerican modernism (Crunden 1982, 133-62). Althoughscholars disagreeon thedegree to whichStieglitz himself initiated American photo- graphy'sturn away from the academic,pictorialist style of the turn of the centurytowards the hard-edged,geometric productions of the following decades(Arrowsmith and West 1992; Bunnell 1993, 1-38; Homer 1983; Peterson1993; Pettuck 1981; Watson 1991), few havedenied Stieglitz and the photographicschool he engendereda central place in the pantheonof American visual modernism) Yet, Stieglitz'stalent as an artistand connoisseur of thenew only partially explainshis success within the art world,both occluding his relationship to his predecessorsand prohibiting a morenuanced understanding of photo- graphicmodernism's emergence and rise to preeminencein the United States)Stieglitz's proficiency asan art-world organizer, as much as the fresh- nessof his vision,transformed the face of photographicproduction in America,and provided a modelfor artistsworking in othermedia, as well. 4 As both a preserverof the heavilyorganizational approach to artistic productionchampioned by his Gilded Age predecessors, and an innovator on thoseforms, Stieglitz gave new shape to Americanunderstandings of artistic creation.s Like the Gilded Age institution builders who had sought to pro- mote the developmentof art in Americathrough the establishmentof museums,schools, and criticism, Stieglitz made a placefor photography amongthe fine arts both by developinginstitutions devoted to its advance- ].M. blancini/ 39 mentand through constant negotiation for itsacceptance among the already establishedstructures of the art world (Keller1984). 6 Stieglitzreimagined the nature and function of criticism in significant ways. If he utilized time-testedinstitutional means to build a placefor artistic photographyin a literalsense, he used criticism toachieve a more specific butmore metaphorical construction, building his circle into an avant-garde, presumablyindependent ofart-world ties, and constructing theirworks as the inevitable,natural next step in thedevelopment of artistic photography. By billingthe promotion of a particularset of producersand productions asa crusadefor the promotion of artisticphotography per se, Stieglitz closed off alternativedefinitions of artisticphotography and represented his associates asthe only and self-evident future of art (Trachtenberg1989, ch. 4). 7 Throughthis refashioning of criticism, and through the construction of a verticallyintegrated organizational structure that mirrored contemporary movestowards consolidation in businessand industry,Stieglitz secured a lastingplace in theAmerican cultural imagination not only for modernist photography,8but for the avant-garde 9itself. VerticalIntegration Stieglitz'sart-world empire consisted of three central organizations: the Photo-Secession,founded in 1902,Camera Work, a journalwhich ran from 1903to 1917,and the "Little Galleries" at 291Fifth Avenue in New York, whichbegan operation in 1905(Naef 1978, 116-53). Self-consciously modelledafter the various European splinter groups from which it tookits name,the Photo-Secession joined photographers andsympathizers in an associationdevoted to theacceptance of photography asa validartistic medium.Not only a convenientgate-keeping device, whereby membership readilydistinguished insiders from outsiders, theassociation alsohelped to shapethe boundariesof a unitedfront for entryinto competitions, exhibitions,and the like, undergirding aesthetic sympathy with the bond of formalassociation. Membership within the Photo-Secession, likemembership withinthe Society of AmericanArtists, the Ten, and the range of other formaland informal associations that artistsformed throughout the nine- teenthcentury, provided artists not only with sheltered opportunities for Canadian Review of American Studies 40 Revue canadsenned'ktudes ambr•cames exhibitionwithin the fold, but offered solidarity and common cause to those with grievancesagainst the hangingcommittees that determinedthe com- positionof mostlarge, public exhibitions. As the publicface of the Photo-Secession,the Little Galleries("291") servedas the starting point from which Stieglitz could develop and control a contextof displayamenable to Secessionistneeds, providing a seemingly "independent"space in whichmembers' works could be displayedwithout outside"interference." As a site for the presentationof works by artistsin nonphotographicfields, it servedas a forgein whichto fashionSecessionist links with the largerart community,which, given the group's desire to legitimatephotography as an art, was paramount.Exhibitions of this sort publiclydemonstrated the kinshipbetween artistic photography and more traditionalmedia, and providedan artisticcontext in which viewerscould locateSecessionist works. •ø Best of all, aninclusive exhibition policy served to integratethe Photo-Secessionwithin the art world by forging l•nks betweenSecessionists and artistsin otherfields, while simultaneouslyat- testingto its much-vauntedindependence from art-worldpolitics and art- world conventions,which dictatedthat photographyand the other arts shouldoccupy separate and distinct spheres. TMThus while the gallery served someof the samepurposes of manynineteenth-century photographic gal- leries-mostobviously, the public displayof its founder'sphotographic creations--291differed significantly from venuessuch as Mathew Brady's "galleryof greathistorical figures" and Napoleon Sarony's gallery of actors andother notables in two respects (Orvell 1989, 8-9; 79-81). 29 l's emphas•s on photography'sformal and aesthetic qualities, rather than on its subject matter,demonstrated a turn away from previous uses of themedium as a his- torical,pedagogical or documentarytool. Moreover, Stieglitz's decision to buildties within the art worldby demonstratingthe linksbetween photo- graphyand other media, rather than to reachout to a broaderpublic through appealsto itstaste for thefamous and heroic, also marked a significantde- parturefrom previous practice. The journalCamera Work served as the linchpinof Stieglitz'senterprise. Althoughthey insisted on its independence, Stieglitz and fellow editor Joseph T. Keileyconsistently used the journal not onlyto promotethe acceptance of photographyasan art, but to keepreaders abreast of Secessionsuccesses J.M. Mancini / 41 andto publicizeexhibitions at theLittle Galleries. •2Not merelyan adver- tisingsupplement, Canera Work lay at theheart of a moresubtle enterprise: Stieglitz'sconstruction of the Photo-Secession asan artistic splinter group, successfulfor thegenius of itsworks, rather than its dependence on art-world politics.For the many readers who could not experience their exhibitions first-hand,Cantera Work was the Photo-Secession.•3If the Little Galleries providedan amenablecontext of displayfor modernistworks, Stieglitz's abilityto puta positivespin on all thattook place therein ensured that that contextextended far beyond the literal space bounded by the gallery walls. 34 Leavingnothing to chance,Stieglitz supervised artistic production from beginningto end,integrating creation, display, and criticism under one dominion. CanteraWork supported the third element in Stieglitz'sempire, the Photo- Secession.Within the first year of publication,the iournal's editors devoted a smallsupplement to answering the "many... enquiriesasto thenature andaims of the Photo-Secessionand requirements of eligibility to member- ship"("The Photo-Secession," Camera Work 3 [July1903], supplement). In thisperiodically updated and reprinted supplement, theeditors presented the Secessionto the publicas a unifiedmovement, dedicated
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