Photo-Secession

Group of mainly American Pictorialist photographers founded by ALFRED STIEGLITZ in New York in 1902, with the aim of advancing photography as a fine art. Stieglitz, who chose the organization's name partly to reflect the Modernism of European artistic Secession movements, remained its guiding spirit. Other leading members included Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude K?sebier, Edward Steichen and Clarence H. White. The Secession also exhibited and published work by Europeans, for example Robert Demachy, Frederick H. Evans, Heinrich K?hn and Baron Adolf de Meyer, who shared the Americans' attitude that photography was a valid medium of artistic expression (see PICTORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY).

See the Abbreviations for further details.

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Founded by the brilliant but domineering Alfred Stieglitz in 1902, the Photo-Secession is perhaps unique in the history of world arts organizations for being both apparently open and uncompromisingly exclusive in its structure and stated aims. Stieglitz had fallen out with the Camera Club of New York, whose journal, Camera Notes, he had created and edited. He and his followers had been increasingly influenced by forward-looking photographic organizations abroad such as the Linked Ring Brotherhood in England and secessionist movements in Austria and Germany. These groups sought to emancipate themselves from the constraints of existing photographic organizations that, they felt, inhibited individual expression and the recognition of photography as a fine art on a par with painting and sculpture. Key early figures in the Photo-Secession were Gertrude Käsebier, Clarence H. White, Joseph T. Keiley (1869-1914), Edward Steichen, Frank Eugene, and Alvin Langdon Coburn. The full founding governing council consisted of thirteen ‘founders’, selected from a pool of elected ‘fellows’. The ranks of lesser, associate members, initially numbering 28, would soon swell to well over 100.

In 1903 Stieglitz brought forth the first issue of Camera Work, in which the intentions of the Photo-Secession were more clearly articulated. The organization mounted significant shows of photography, most notably the International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography in Buffalo in 1910. But Stieglitz's autocratic ways and growing interest in the exhibiting of modern art generally—not just photography—began to alienate some of his followers. Although never formally disbanded, the Photo-Secession effectively ended with the closing of Stieglitz's Gallery 291 and the cessation of Camera Work in 1917.

— Tim Troy

Bibliography

• Doty, R., Photo-Secession: Stieglitz and the Fine-Art Movement in Photography (1960; repr. 1978).
• Homer, W. I., Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession (1983)

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