High Card

" ... he is important to everyone oh yes he is whether they know it or not oh yes he is."

On New Year's Day the man of whom Gertrude Stein wrote these words, Alfred Stieglitz, considered by some experts the greatest living photographer, was 78. Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art had on display its latest acquisition of Stieglitz' work, ten photographs chosen by Stieglitz himself: three taken in Europe during the '80s, the others in America between 1927 and 1935.

With one exception all the prints were non-instantaneous photographs of static subjects. They made it clear that for a half century Stieglitz has been a superb camera technician and artist, scornful of trickery and flash. The 1889 experiment with sunlight seeping through the Venetian blinds in Paula (see cut) was no less experimental, no less successful than Car 2F 77-77 (1935), where a house and trees are seen mirrored in the shining surface of an automobile.

Alfred Stieglitz has been praised without end in terms both glowing and peculiar. Wrote Esthete Lewis Mumford in 1934: "In a part-by-part revelation of a woman's body, in the isolated presentation of a hand, a breast, a neck, a thigh, a leg, Stieglitz achieved the exact visual equivalent of the hand or the face as it travels over the body of the beloved." Cracked Artist Thomas H. Benton: "When Stieglitz aims his camera at a young woman's backside it is as if he had discovered for the first time in history that young women's backsides are attractive."

Once described as "an art dealer with the hairiest ears and the most positive opinions," Stieglitz has encouraged eccentric criticism by being not only a fine photographer and pioneering art dealer, but also a card.

He was born in 1864 in Hoboken, N.J. Said Stieglitz last week: "What is important is that I was conceived April 1, 1863." Seven years later his father, a successful wool merchant, moved the family to Manhattan. When Alfred was 17 Papa Stieglitz packed him off to Germany to become an engineer. In Berlin young Alfred fell for photography.

When he returned three years later he went into business as a photographer, did pictures for the Police Gazette, edited American Amateur Photographer and later Camera Notes.

By 1902, Stieglitz had gathered round him a small group of outstanding photographers including Clarence H. White, Gertrude Kasebier and Edward Steichen. They had a gallery in Steichen's home at 291 Fifth Avenue which became famous as the "291."

Says Stieglitz: "It was in those Photo-Secession rooms that the ice was broken for modern art in America." This is no idle boast. Between 1908-16, 291 introduced for the first time to the U.S. the works of Rodin (drawings), Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cezanne, Rousseau, Georgia O'Keeffe (whom Stieglitz married in 1924).

In 1930 Stieglitz opened another gallery, "An American Place," on Madison Avenue. Here for the first time photographs were hung side by side with paintings. Says Stieglitz: "Only innocence can breed a place like An American Place." Stieglitz is still convinced that he is innocent, is also convinced that he has a sense of humor. "Otherwise," says he, "I would have been dead long ago." Artist Benton does not agree. Says he: "Stieglitz has a mania for self-aggrandizement and his mouth is never shut. ... He never finds himself funny."

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