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Camera Work was a quarterly photography journal published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917. Amidst the early 20th-century debates about photography's place in the fine arts, the journal (which utilized ) was used by proponents to justify it.
Prior to Camera Work, Alfred Stieglitz founded the Camera Club of New York, through which he published Camera Notes and was the journal's editor. While at the club, he advocated for photography to be recognized as an art form rather than solely a technical practice. In 1902, he was expelled from the Camera Club and resigned as editor of Camera Notes.
After he was expelled, Edward Steichen, Gertrude Käsebier, and several other photographers offered personal and professional support to Stieglitz and formed a group.
Each issue's cover identified the journal as " Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly, Edited and Published by Alfred Stieglitz, New York."
Gravure Printing were produced from the photographers' original negatives whenever possible. If the gravure came from a negative, this fact was noted in the accompanying text, and these gravures were noted to be original prints.
Stieglitz Tipped-in page the in every issue, touching up dust spots or scratches when necessary. Stieglitz would not allow anyone else to tip in. When a set of prints failed to arrive for a Photo-Secession exhibition in Brussels, gravures from the magazine were hung instead. Because of their high visual quality, most viewers assumed they were looking at the original photographs.
Before the first issue was printed, Stieglitz received 68 subscriptions for the new publication. Stieglitz had 1,000 copies of each issue printed, regardless of the number of subscriptions. Under financial duress, he reduced the number to 500 for the final two issues. Beginning with the first issue, the subscription rate was US $4 yearly, or US $2 for single issues.
"Photography being in the main a process in monochrome, it is on subtle gradations of tone and Lightness that its artistic beauty so frequently depends. It is therefore highly necessary that reproductions of photographic work must be made with exceptional care, and discretion of the spirit of the original is to be retained... Only examples of such works as gives evidence of individuality and artistic worth, regardless of school, or contains some exceptional feature of technical merit, or such as exemplifies some treatment worthy of consideration, will find recognition in these pages. Nevertheless, the Pictorial will be the dominating feature of the magazine."
In his first editorial, Stieglitz expressed gratitude to a group of photographers, listing them in the following order: Robert Demachy, Will Cadby, Edward Steichen, Gertrude Käsebier, Frank Eugene, James Craig Annan, Clarence H. White, William Dyer, Eva Watson, Frances Benjamin Johnston, and R. Child Baley. Over the following fourteen years, Camera Work published numerous photographs by these contributors.
During this early period, Stieglitz used Camera Work to continue the principles he had previously begun in Camera Notes. He retained the same three assistant editors from Camera Notes: Dallett Fuguet, Joseph Keiley, and John Francis Strauss. Fuguet and Keiley contributed extensively to the journal through their own articles and photographs, while Strauss's role appears to have been more limited and largely behind the scenes. Neither Stieglitz nor his associate editors received a salary for their work, nor were any photographers paid for publication.
One of the purposes of the new journal was to serve as a vehicle for the Photo-Secession, an invitation-only group that Stieglitz founded in 1902 to promote photography as an art form. Much of the work published in Camera Work came from the Photo-Secession exhibitions he hosted, and soon rumors circulated that the magazine was intended only for those involved in the Photo-Secession. In 1904, Stieglitz attempted to counter this idea by publishing a full-page notice in the journal in order to correct the "erroneous impression…that only the favored few are admitted to our subscription list." He then went on to say, "…although it is the mouthpiece of the Photo-Secession that fact will not be allowed to hamper its independence in the slightest degree."
While making this proclamation in the journal, Stieglitz continued to unabashedly promote the Photo-Secession in its pages. In 1905, he wrote, "the most important step in the history of the Photo-Secession," was taken with the opening of his photography gallery that year. "Without the flourish of trumpets, without the stereotypes, press-view or similar antiquated functions, the Secessionists and a few friends informally opened the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession at 291 Fifth Avenue, New York."
Stieglitz also continued to intertwine the walls of his galleries with the pages of his magazine. Stieglitz's closest friends (Steichen, Demachy, White, Käsebier and Keiley) were represented in both, while many others were granted one but not the other. Increasingly, a single photographer was given the preponderance of coverage in an issue, and in doing so Stieglitz relied more and more on his small circle of old supporters. This led to increased tensions among Stieglitz and some of his original colleagues, and when Stieglitz began to introduce paintings, drawings and other art forms in his gallery, many photographers saw it as the breaking point in their relationship with Stieglitz.
In 1909, Stieglitz was notified about yet another sign of the increasingly difficult times. London's Linked Ring, which for more than a decade Stieglitz had looked to as model for the Photo-Secession, finally dissolved. Stieglitz knew this signaled the end of an era, but rather than be set back by these changes, he began making plans to integrate Camera Work even further into the realm of modern art.
This same year a huge retrospective exhibition of the Photo-Secession was held at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. More than 15,000 people visited the exhibition over its four-week showing, and at the end the Gallery purchased twelve prints and reserved one room for the permanent display of photography. This was the first time a museum in the U.S. acknowledged that photography was in fact an art form, and, in many ways, it marked the beginning of the end for the Photo-Secession.
After the Buffalo show, Stieglitz began showcasing more art in Camera Work. In 1911, a double issue focused on reproductions and analysis of Rodin's drawings, and analysis of the work of Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso. This did not sit well with the photographers who still made up most of the subscription list. Half of the existing subscribers immediately cancelled their subscriptions.
By 1912, the number of subscriptions had dropped to 304. The shift away from photography to a mix of other art and photography had cost Stieglitz many subscribers. To inflate the issues' marketplace value and attract subscribers, Stieglitz began to destroy unwanted copies. The price of back issues soon increased substantially, but the number of paid subscriptions continued to dwindle.
Stieglitz published issue 47 in January, 1915, in which Steichen referred to Camera Work as a "project in self-adulation."
Three years earlier, Stieglitz had asked many of his friends to tell him what his gallery "291" meant to them. He received sixty-eight replies. Only four of the comments came from – all of the rest were from painters, illustrators and art critics. Stieglitz printed all of tsixty-eight replies, unedited (including Steichen's previously mentioned opinion), in issue 47. It was the only issue Camera Work that did not include an illustration of any kind.
Following Issue 47, at the insistence of his friend Paul Haviland, Stieglitz began releasing another journal, 291, which was intended to bring attention to his gallery of the same name. This effort occupied much of Stieglitz's time and interest from the summer of 1915 until the last issue was published in early 1916. In April 1916, Stieglitz met Georgia O'Keeffe, although the latter had gone to see exhibits at "291" since 1908. Stieglitz began devoting more and more of his time to their developing relationship.
Issue 48 appeared sixteen months after Issue 47, October 1916. In issue 48, Stieglitz introduced the work of a young photographer, Paul Strand, whose photographic vision was indicative of the aesthetic changes now at the heart of Camera Work's demise. Strand shunned the soft focus and symbolic content of the Pictorialists and instead strove to create a new vision that found beauty in the clear lines and forms of ordinary objects. By publishing Strand's work, Stieglitz was hastening the end of the aesthetic vision he had championed for so long.
In June 1917, the final issue of Camera Work was published. This issue was devoted almost entirely to Strand's photographs. Stieglitz did not indicate an end to the journal. Instead, he included an announcement that the next issue would feature O'Keefe's work. Soon after publishing this issue, however, Stieglitz could no longer afford to publish Camera Work or to run "291" due to the effect of the war and the changes in the New York art scene. He ceased publication of both journals with no formal announcement or notice.
After ending publication, Stieglitz had several thousand unsold copies of Camera Work, along with more than 8,000 unsold copies of 291. He sold most of these in bulk to a Rag-and-bone man, and gave away or destroyed the rest. Almost all extant copies came from original subscribers' collections.
Despite Stieglitz's initial statement that Camera Work "owes allegiance to no organization or clique", in the end it was primarily a visual showcase for his work and that of his close friends. Of the 473 photographs published in Camera Work during its fifteen-year publication, 357 were the work of just fourteen photographers: Stieglitz, Steichen, Frank Eugene, Clarence H. White, Alvin Langdon Coburn, J. Craig Annan, Hill & Adamson, Baron Adolf de Meyer, Heinrich Kühn, George Seeley, Paul Strand, Robert Demachy, Gertrude Käsebier and Anne Brigman. The remaining 116 photographs came from just thirty-nine other photographers.
Three complete sets of Camera Work have sold at notable auction
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