Alfred Stieglitz · 1919
Georgia O'Keeffe — Hands
- Year
- 1919
- Original process
- Palladium print
- Held at
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
Key facts
- Edition
- Signed and numbered limited edition
- Authenticity
- Official certificate of authenticity
- Chemistry
- Non-toxic process (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Year
- 1919
- Original held at
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Public domain
- Since 2017 (CPI L.123-1)
- Printer
- Maison Picturale — Paris 20e studio
- Lead time
- Hand-made · 4 to 8 weeks
Maison Picturale reinterpretation in platinum-palladium
About this work
Close palladium fragment of O'Keeffe's hands isolated against a neutral ground, exposed in 1919 in Stieglitz's New York studio at 1111 Madison Avenue (the apartment above his sister-in-law's, where the couple lived after the closure of 291 Gallery in 1917). The composite portrait of O'Keeffe is unprecedented in art-historical scope: 350+ portraits and 200+ nudes between 1918 and 1937, deliberately decomposing the figure into expressive parts — hands, torso, neck, breasts, feet — so that no single image stands for the whole. Stieglitz declared in 1921: 'When I make a picture of Miss O'Keeffe, I am photographing her hands as much as her face, her feet as much as her body — and each of these is a separate portrait.' This serial fragmentation anticipates by half a century the conceptual portrait practice of Cindy Sherman, Roni Horn and Annette Messager, and provided the immediate compositional model for Edward Weston's celebrated 1925-1930 hand studies of Tina Modotti. The MET (DP232991) holds the print within the Alfred Stieglitz Collection donated by the photographer himself in 1933, the foundational 419-print gift that established the museum's photography department, complemented by the National Gallery's Key Set of 1,642 prints donated by O'Keeffe between 1949 and 1980. At Maison Picturale today, the palladium procédé translates directly into a platine-palladium tirage on 640 gsm cotton paper — the same noble-metal procédé Stieglitz used for the O'Keeffe series, reformulated by Vision Picturale to remove the dangerous platinum salts. A charbon (carbon transfer) alternative in non-toxic chemistry would deepen the deposit weight of the skin and emphasise the matte, mineral permanence of O'Keeffe's hands against the neutral ground.
Reference file : MET Open Access via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)
Procédé Transposition
Each Maison Picturale print is a material reinterpretation of the image. Three readings of the same work — the original, its closest transposition, and a creative transposition into another procédé.
Noble metals — platinum and palladium — on 640 gsm cotton paper. The longest tonal range in all analog photography.
MP procédé — reformulated non-toxic chemistry, signed by Tristan Sidem.
View the procédéHistory of the process
Le platinotype est inventé en 1873 par l'ingénieur britannique William Willis, qui dépose la même année le brevet du procédé sous le nom Platinotype Process. Willis fonde en 1879 la Platinotype Company, qui commercialise les papiers sensibilisés au platine en Europe pendant plusieurs décennies. Le palladium est introduit au début du XXe siècle comme variante économique, sans rien céder sur la qualité tonale.
Le platine-palladium devient rapidement le procédé de prédilection des maîtres de la photographie d'art. Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Alvin Langdon Coburn et Frederick H. Evans en font leur procédé signature, et leurs épreuves originales conservées à la Royal Photographic Society de Londres, à la George Eastman House de Rochester et au Metropolitan Museum of Art de New York témoignent encore aujourd'hui de la perfection tonale du platine. Stieglitz écrivait que le platine offrait une échelle de gris plus étendue que tout autre procédé.
Our approach
Chaque tirage platine-palladium réalisé à l'atelier 1 Passage Dagorno est une pièce unique en édition très limitée, destinée aux collectionneurs sérieux et aux institutions. Le coût des sels de platine et de palladium, métaux nobles dont les cours suivent ceux des marchés financiers, en fait notre procédé haut de gamme. Chaque épreuve est préparée, sensibilisée et développée à la main par nos artisans tireurs.
Notre papier aquarelle satiné 100 % coton 640 g/m² est particulièrement adapté au platine-palladium : sa fibre coton pure, sans azurants optiques ni additifs alcalins, permet aux sels métalliques de s'inscrire en profondeur dans le papier, et sa surface satinée révèle pleinement la tonalité chaude unique et l'échelle tonale exceptionnelle du procédé.
Inside our studio
1 Passage Dagorno, Paris 20e. Each print is hand-crafted by Tristan Sidem and Raphaël Lebas de Lacour, using Vision Picturale's reformulated non-toxic chemistry. Limited edition, signed and numbered.
Commission this print
- Hand-printed and signed by Tristan Sidem & Raphaël Lebas de Lacour
- Reformulated non-toxic chemistry (Vision Picturale recipes)
- Limited edition, numbered, certificate of authenticity
- 1 Passage Dagorno studio, Paris 20e
- Delivery 3 to 5 weeks · ships worldwide from France
Available formats
- 30 × 40 cmFrom 280€
- 40 × 50 cmFrom 420€
- 50 × 70 cmFrom 680€
- 70 × 100 cmFrom 1180€
- Custom sizeFrom 1850€
Indicative pricing — the exact rate depends on the chosen procédé, support and finish.
Contemporary print after a work in the public domain (CPI L.123-1, 70 years post-mortem). Hand-crafted reinterpretation by Maison Picturale's master printers — this is not an original vintage by the master. The mention 'after [Master]' is systematic on the print and on the certificate of authenticity.
