1864-1946 · American

Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) is the founding figure of American art photography. Founder of Camera Work (1903) and gallery 291 in New York, he led the Photo-Secession movement that elevated photography to fine art status and championed pictorialism before turning to modernist abstraction with his Equivalents cloud series (1925-1934).

Public domain since 2017 · CPI L.123-1

Held at

Metropolitan Museum of Art
National Gallery of Art (Key Set)
Art Institute of Chicago
Yale Beinecke Library
George Eastman Museum
J. Paul Getty Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art

Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, Stieglitz studied photography in Berlin under Hermann Wilhelm Vogel before returning to New York in 1890. His 1907 photograph The Steerage marked his transition from pictorialism to modernism — widely cited as a foundational image of photographic modernism. As publisher of Camera Work (1903-1917) and director of gallery 291 (1905-1917), Stieglitz introduced European modernism to America (Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, Brancusi) and championed American modernists (Marin, Hartley, Dove, O'Keeffe — whom he married in 1924). His Equivalents proper (1925-1934), preceded by the Music: A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs (1922-23), form one of the earliest bodies of work in photographic abstraction (preceded by Alvin Langdon Coburn's Vortographs, 1916). His works are held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art (Key Set, 1,642 prints), the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Yale Beinecke Library. Public domain since 2017 (70 years post-mortem). His platinum and palladium prints inform Maison Picturale's noble-metal practice.

Essential works

A curated selection of public-domain works by Alfred Stieglitz, reinterpretable as contemporary prints by Maison Picturale's master printers. Each artwork page details the original process and its atelier equivalent.

Print after — systematic mention on the certificate of authenticity.

1907 · Photogravure

The Steerage

Photographed in June 1907 aboard the SS Kaiser Wilhelm II en route to Europe, first published in Camera Work no. 36 (October 1911) and exhibited at gallery 291 in 1913. Stieglitz himself described it as the work that marked a new beginning in his vision — separating his pictorialist period from his modernist turn.

Original held at : Metropolitan Museum of Art · Art Institute of Chicago · National Gallery of Art

Reference file source : Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

1903 · Photogravure

The Flatiron

Stieglitz's tribute to the newly built Flatiron Building, photographed through falling snow in Madison Square. He compared the skyscraper to the Parthenon of New York.

Original held at : Metropolitan Museum of Art · Art Institute of Chicago · J. Paul Getty Museum

Reference file source : Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

1902 · Platinum print

The Hand of Man

A locomotive billowing steam across the Long Island City railyard. Stieglitz embraced modern industrial subjects, declaring the modern city worthy of artistic interpretation; the original print is platinum, later reproduced as photogravure in Camera Work.

Original held at : Metropolitan Museum of Art · Art Institute of Chicago

Reference file source : Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

1893 · Carbon print (Stieglitz original) / Photogravure (Camera Work)

Winter, Fifth Avenue

A blizzard on Fifth Avenue (22 February 1893) with a stagecoach pushing through driving snow. Stieglitz stood for three hours in the storm waiting for the right moment; his original print was carbon on watercolor paper, later reproduced as photogravure.

Original held at : Metropolitan Museum of Art · National Gallery of Art · Museum of Modern Art · Minneapolis Institute of Art

Reference file source : MET Open Access via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

1892 · Photogravure

The Terminal

Horses being watered at a streetcar terminal opposite the Old Post Office, south of City Hall Park (downtown Manhattan), on a snowy day in 1892. A turning point in Stieglitz's practice from formalism toward direct urban observation.

Original held at : Metropolitan Museum of Art · Art Institute of Chicago

Reference file source : Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

1900 · Photogravure

Spring Showers

A lone street sweeper and slender tree silhouetted in the rain near Madison Square. The atmospheric tonal scale — wet pavement, blurred horse-drawn traffic — epitomizes Stieglitz's pictorialist phase.

Original held at : Cleveland Museum of Art · Metropolitan Museum of Art

Reference file source : Cleveland Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

1894 · Photogravure

The Net Mender

A Dutch fisherwoman patiently mending a fishing net at Katwijk. Stieglitz considered it one of his finest pictorialist achievements.

Original held at : Rijksmuseum · Metropolitan Museum of Art

Reference file source : Rijksmuseum via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

1907 · Photogravure (printed 1907)

Snapshot — From My Window, Berlin

A view from Stieglitz's Berlin window, photographed on his European travels and printed as a photogravure in 1907. The flattened plane and obstructed view anticipate the modernist framing Stieglitz would soon embrace in New York.