Camera Work

Book excerpt: Many of the early twentieth century's finest examples of photography and modernist art reached their widest audience in the fifty issues of Camera Work, edited and published by the legendary photographer Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917. The lavishly illustrated periodical established photography as a fine art, and brought a new sensibility to the American art world. This volume reproduces chronologically all the photographs and other illustrations (except for advertisements) that ever appeared in the publication. Included here are some of the finest and best-known works by American and European artists and photographers, including numerous photos by Stieglitz himself as well as Edward (as Eduard) Steichen, Paul Strand, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Clarence White, Robert Demachy, Frank Eugene, Julia Margaret Cameron, Gertrude Käsebier, Heinrich Kühn, and many others. Paintings, drawings, and sculpture by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Mary Cassatt, Picasso, Matisse, John Marin, Rodin, Brancusi, and Nadelman—to name just a famous few—appear here as well. Marianne Fulton Margolis provided an extensive historical Introduction about Stieglitz and the magazine and prepared three complete Indexes of the pictures, by title, artist, and sitter. Painstakingly accurate and complete, Camera Work is an indispensable reference for an outstanding period in the history of photography and art.