Getty Museum

[Alfred Stieglitz, Lake George, Summer]

Date

1929

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

American

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) saw a vitality in Paul Strand's pictures, which he described in the October 1916 issue of _Camera Work_ as "keeping in close touch with all that is related to life in its fullest aspect." Although there was an age difference of twenty-six years between the two men, they enjoyed a friendship based on mutual respect and a shared love for photography. Stieglitz believed Strand offered a new and dynamic direction for the medium, while Strand greatly admired everything Stieglitz had done to promote the art. In 1917 _Camera Work_ ceased publication and Stieglitz closed the gallery at 291. As both men struggled to create photographs against the grim backdrop of World War I, their relationship became more complex, particularly regarding their mutual affection for Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986). In 1918 Strand was inducted into the U.S. Army Medical Corps, where he maintained a correspondence with Stieglitz and eagerly shared copies of _Camera Work_ with his fellow soldiers. Once his term finished a year later, Strand returned to New York and the Stieglitz circle. This circle, which included Arthur Dove (1880-1946), Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), John Marin (1870-1953), and O'Keeffe, was seen by many as an exclusive group. Its members were interested in finding and expressing a purely American vision. Focusing on the aspects of New York that were modern, bold, and dynamic, the artists recognized and celebrated technology within their art, seeing the new machine age as something that was distinctly of this nation. This portrait taken in the summer of 1929 shows Stieglitz with his camera outdoors around his beloved Lake George. As Strand became engaged with the Southwest, he was slowly becoming disengaged from Stieglitz. The relationship between the two men eventually came to an end by the spring of 1932, after Strand exhibited prints at Stieglitz's An American Place. Strand felt that Stieglitz had not successfully promoted the exhibition, which included paintings on glass by his wife Rebecca Salsbury, and that he was apparently not wholly supportive of the work on display. It was the end of a friendship and an era. Adapted from _Paul Strand_, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Anne M. Lyden (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005), 28, 42. ©2005, J. Paul Getty Trust.

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