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Lot 189

Alfred Stieglitz
(1864-1946)
The Steerage

Prints & Photographs | Bonhams Skinner

11 – 21 September 2023, 12:00 EDT

Skinner Marlborough, Massachusetts

Sold for US$17,920 inc. premium

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Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946)

The Steerage, 1907
Large-format photogravure on Japan paper, printed c. 1915.
13 1/8 x 10 1/2 in. (33.3 x 26.7 cm)
sheet 15 7/8 x 11 1/8 in. (40.3 x 28.3 cm)

Footnotes

Literature
Alfred Stieglitz: Camera Work, The Complete Illustrations 1903-1917, Cologne, 1997, cover (Steerage), pp. 590 and 583
Greenough, Alfred Stieglitz, The Key Set: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs, National Gallery of Art, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2002, No. 310

N.B.
As a founding member of the Photo-Secession and publisher of Camera Notes and Camera Work, Alfred Stieglitz was a major force in the promotion and elevation of photography as a fine art in America at the turn of the 20th century. While he first championed a Pictorial aesthetic—painterly, soft-focus images with subtle tonal variation and unusual compositions—The Steerage marks his embrace of a more modernist, "straight" depiction of contemporary life.

Photographed aboard a transatlantic journey, the 1907 image depicted the third-class section of the ship and the passengers that occupied the space. Proclaimed as the first Modernist photograph, the composition faithfully renders the scene as it unfolded. A masterclass in form and perspective, The Steerage is equally a social and societal class study.

Stieglitz first published the image in a 1911 issue of Camera Work devoted exclusively to his own photographs made in this new style. In 1915, he lavishly reprinted the image as a large-scale photogravure. Stieglitz frequently used the photogravure process for his exhibition prints, considering it equal in quality to the platinum or carbon processes.

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