Getty Museum
The Hand of Man
Creator
Alfred StieglitzAmerican Photographer · 1864–1946
All works by this person →Alfred Stieglitz's contribution to the history of photography extends far beyond his photographic work, which he began as a student in Germany in 1883. He influenced generations of photographers, painters, and sculptors both directly and indirectly. In 1905, with Edward Steichen, he founded the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York, which later became known simply
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- negative 1902; print about 1933
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
A locomotive engine steams toward the camera on its barely visible tracks, wearing a billowing black cloud of smoke like a plumed hat. The criss-crossing lines of tracks beside it snake off toward the horizon, and the telephone poles at left appear to be making the same march. Alfred Stieglitz's composition is a treatise on the importance of the machine in the modern Industrial Age. The title of the photograph, *The Hand of Man*, sets up a comparison between the machine that is depicted and the human artistic impulse that created the image.
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