Camera Work
Camera Work, published between 1903 and 1917 by Alfred Stieglitz, and perhaps the most important arts magazine of the early 20th century. In its 50 issues essayists and artists pronounced on the rapidly evolving world of art and photography. The work of key new artists from both sides of the Atlantic, John Marin, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Rodin, Marius De Zayas, and others, was represented. In fact, artists such as Matisse appeared in Camera Work several years before the celebrated Armory Show of 1913.
Stieglitz, founder of the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession (1905-8) and its successor, Gallery 291 (1908-17), saw the need for a journal that would celebrate photography as a fine art; indeed, an art that, as with painting, sculpture, and music, would inevitably evolve with time. He had founded or edited several earlier journals, American Amateur Photographer and Camera Notes, but in each of these he had encountered resistance to his ideas.
Camera Work became a forum for lively criticism and debate about not only photography but the arts in general. R. Child Bayley, Robert Demachy, Frederick Evans, Sadakichi Hartmann, George Bernard Shaw, and Edward Steichen were among the many who contributed opinion pieces; Gertrude Stein's first writing appeared in the journal. The images presented in Camera Work were meticulously printed, making it unique in the world of periodicals. Detailed descriptions of the techniques used to produce them were also included.
It is significant that the last issue of the journal (49/50, June 1917) introduced the radical work of Paul Strand.
— Tim Troy
Bibliography
- Green, J., Camera Work: A Critical Anthology (1973)
