Alfred Stieglitz
Stieglitz, who was born in 1864 in New Jersey, was a giant of a photographer in late 19th century until his death in 1946. His long term ambition had been to promote photography as a serious art at a time when it was regarded as a technical tool rather than art form. He was an exceptional photographer. He was the editor of a widely respected photography publication called “Camera Work”. He curated exhibitions of photography and promoted modern art from Europe at his gallery, 291 on Fifth Avenue, New York. For example, in 1908 he made use of his connections in Europe to show drawings by Rodin and work by Matisse. He was a founder, with the help of Edward Steichen, of the Photo-Secession movement in 1902 that exhibited work from the gallery. Steiglitz was a non conformist hence the secession as he had little time for the institutional, academic and un-adventurous. The photo Secessionists were really an American part of a much broader movement of Pictorialists.
Stieglitz early work was in the Pictorialist manner where photographers tried to mimic painters of the time. Pictorialism flourished largely between 1885 and 1915. Later, he reacted against the widespread attempt by photographers to mimic impressionist or pictorial art. He wanted photography to be accepted as a truthful representation of reality.
“There are many schools of painting. Why should there not be many schools of photographic art? There is hardly a right and a wrong in these matters, but there is truth, and that should form the basis of all works of art.”
Steiglitz not only promoted photography as an art but also promoted the likes of Cezanne, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, Brancusi, and others at 291. Quite uniquely Steiglitz exhibited photography produced by largely unknown Americans with modern art from well known artists from Europe. He really wanted photography to be accepted as art and be seen side by side with paintings and sculpture on an equal footing.
Stieglitz was very much for living in the present.
“I have always been a great believer in today. Most people live either in the past or in the future, so that they really never live at all. So many people are busy worrying about the future of art or society, they have no time to preserve what is.”
As a photographer, Stieglitz liked to visualise what a photograph could be and wanted to capture the excitement of what he saw. There is a great story behind him taking perhaps his most famous photograph “The Steerage”. In 1907 he was sailing with his first wife and daughter for Europe. By the third day he could no longer stand his surroundings in the First Class section so he walked as far forward as he could until he came to the end of the deck. He stood alone looking down on to the lower decks inhabited by the Second and Third Class. The scene fascinated him and he was drawn to the figure of a young man wearing a straw hat.
“A round straw hat; the funnel leaning left, the stair-way leaning right; the white drawbridge, its railings made of chain; white suspenders crossed on the back of a man below; circular iron machinery; a mast that cut the sky, completing a triangle, I stood spellbound. I saw shapes related to one another - a picture of shapes, and underlying it, a new vision that held me: simple people; the feeling of ship, ocean, sky; a sense of release that I was away from the mob called rich. Rembrandt came into my mind and I wondered would he have felt as I did.”
Stieglitz saw the photo he wanted but did not have his camera with him. He raced to his cabin, raced back with his Graflex and one unexposed plate. He hoped the scene would remain the same. Fortunately the man with the straw hat had not moved, nor had the man in the cross suspenders, and a woman with a child on her lap remained motionless where she had been before. He took the photo and hoped that it would become a picture “based on related shapes and deepest human feeling”. Despite being bored by his First Class surroundings and being drawn into a view of the lower classes, Stieglitz professed only to be concerned with the composition, technical and aesthetics of what he saw. Fortunately, when he developed the photo on his arrival in Europe he achieved what he saw.
“Some months later, after The Steerage was printed, I felt satisfied, something I have not been very often. When it was published, I felt that if all my photographs were lost and I were represented only by The Steerage, that would be quite all right.”
Steiglitz did not refer to his decisive moment, but this is essentially what he had captured in his photograph. He saw what moved him in the composition he visualised and, despite the course of some time, nothing had changed and he was able to produce a remarkable picture.
Pre-visualisation and the decisive moment are really keys to Steiglitz photography as was his desire to express his aesthetic feelings.
“I go out into the world with my camera and come across something that excites me emotionally, spiritually or aesthetically. I see the image in my mind’s eye. I make the photograph and print it as the equivalent of what I saw and felt.”
When taking a photograph, Steiglitz was adamant that he photographed without any preconceptions. He did not consciously seek a meaning before he took a photograph. Only when he was completely satisfied with a photograph did he allow himself to consider its meaning.
“I simply function when I take a picture. I do not photograph with preconceived notions about life. I put down what I have to say when I must… I want solely to make an image of what I have seen, not what it means to me. It is only after I have created an equivalent for what has moved me that I can begin to think about its significance.”
Stieglitz met the artist Georgia O’Keeffe in 1916, and was immediately attracted to her. He began to take photographs of her in 1917 at his 291 gallery. By 1924 he has become divorced and marries O’Keeffe. She becomes his muse. In the twenty years from 1917 Stieglitz produces more than 350 portraits of O’Keeffe. These portraits were multifaceted. many were of her nude. Some were only parts of her body such as her hands, and neck.
Stieglitz promoted O’Keeffe’s art with two exhibitions before 291 closed in June 1917. Her paintings encompassed a naturalistic style where truth, honesty and reality predominated. Even when they spent much time apart, O’Keeffe in New Mexico and Stieglitz in New York, they would communicate with regular letters. Between 1915 and 1946 they exchanged over 5000 letters some up to 40 pages long. In the early days of Camera Works there were four issues a year but between 2013 and 2017 there were only six issues in total. Falling subscriptions, supply problems of high quality gravures from Berlin due to the First World War led to the ultimate closure of Camera Works. The final double issue portrayed the future of photography as represented by the work of Paul Strand. The last issues were of straight photography and were very different from the first issues of Camera Works that had been influenced by pictorialism.
The letters between Stieglitz and O’Keeffe continue during the period they spent increasingly apart. Despite their astonishingly strong attraction toward each other, both had affairs. In 1923, Stieglitz became infatuated with Beck, the wife of Paul Strand. Six years later she would have her own affair with Beck in New Mexico. In 1927, Stieglitz began a much more serious affair with the 22 year old Dorothy Norman. They became lovers over a few years, and they worked together whenever O’Keeffe was not around until Stieglitz died in 1946. Nevertheless, there still remained a strong bond between Stieglitz and O’Keeffe.
“I love you, my wild Georgia O’Keeffe. I’ll never be able to hold you again. So I fear. But I really don’t fear. It looks like snow. Nothing can surprise me, Oh yes, something can. You. Beautiful surprises only.”
Alfred Stieglitz’s The Steerage (1907) is widely regarded as one of the most important photographs ever made because it marks a turning point in what photography could be—artistically, socially, and conceptually.
1. A decisive break from pictorialism
At the time Stieglitz made The Steerage, he was still associated with pictorialism, a movement that tried to make photographs look like paintings through soft focus and manipulation.
This image does the opposite. It is sharp, direct, and unmanipulated, embracing photography’s own visual language. Stieglitz later described it as his first truly modern photograph.
In that sense, The Steerage helps usher in straight photography, where clarity, form, and structure matter more than painterly effects.
2. A modernist composition
Formally, the photograph is radical for its time.
Strong geometric shapes: diagonals, circles, rectangles, and intersecting planes
A complex but balanced structure of railings, stairs, funnels, and ropes
Human figures integrated into the geometry rather than posed as subjects
The image can be read almost abstractly. This emphasis on form over narrative aligns it with emerging modernist movements in painting and sculpture (Cubism, Constructivism), even though it predates them in photography.
3. Social meaning without sentimentality
The photograph shows passengers on the lower deck of an ocean liner—primarily working-class and immigrant travellers, physically separated from the wealthier passengers above.
What makes it powerful is Stieglitz’s restraint:
No overt moralising
No staged drama
Class division is expressed visually through physical barriers and spatial hierarchy
This subtlety influenced later documentary photographers, showing that photography could address social realities through form as well as content.
4. Photography as an autonomous art form
Stieglitz used The Steerage to argue that photography did not need to imitate painting to be art. The image depends on:
Timing
Seeing
Framing
—all things unique to the medium. This photograph became central to his campaign (through Camera Work and Gallery 291) to establish photography as a fine art equal to painting and sculpture.
5. Long-term influence
The Steerage has influenced generations of photographers, including:
Paul Strand
Walker Evans
Henri Cartier-Bresson
It helped legitimise the idea that a photograph could be:
Formally rigorous
Socially aware
Artistically autonomous
—all at once.
Why it still matters today
For photographers—especially those interested in street photography and personal vision—The Steerage is a reminder that a single, intuitively seen moment can combine form, meaning, and modern life without explanation or embellishment
Below is a close, formal reading of the composition of The Steerage—treating it not as a social document first, but as a constructed visual field. This is very much how Stieglitz himself later spoke about the image.
1. Overall structure: a scaffold of planes
The photograph is organised as a stacked arrangement of horizontal zones crossed by strong diagonals:
Upper zone: the white-clad figures and open deck
Middle zone: railings, staircases, ropes, and funnels
Lower zone: the densely packed steerage passengers
These zones are not cleanly separated; instead, they interlock through repeating bars, posts, and cables, creating tension between openness and confinement.
The image reads less like a window onto a scene and more like a constructed lattice.
2. Dominant diagonals: movement and tension
The most important compositional force is the diagonal gangway that cuts from upper left toward lower right.
It divides the image asymmetrically
It introduces dynamic instability
It prevents the scene from settling into a static documentary view
This diagonal is echoed by:
The angle of the stairs
The slanted rope lines
The tilt of the funnel structure
Together, these diagonals animate the frame and pull the eye repeatedly across it.
3. Geometry versus humanity
Stieglitz creates a deliberate contrast between hard geometry and organic form:
Geometry:
Vertical stanchions
Horizontal railings
Circular shapes (the straw hat, portholes, funnel openings)
Human forms:
Curved backs
Soft clothing folds
Loosely clustered figures
Rather than isolating individuals, Stieglitz absorbs the people into the structure. The figures function visually as shapes—ovals, arcs, masses—balanced against the ship’s architecture.
4. The straw hat as a visual anchor
A single detail often overlooked: the round straw hat worn by a central figure.
It sits near the lower centre of the frame
Its perfect circularity contrasts with the surrounding rectangles and diagonals
It acts as a visual punctuation mark, a moment of stillness
This circle quietly stabilises the image and gives the eye a place to rest before moving again through the complex structure.
5. Depth without perspective illusion
Depth is suggested structurally rather than optically:
Overlapping planes instead of linear perspective
Figures layered behind bars and railings
Space compressed by repeated verticals
This creates a flattened, modernist space, closer to collage or relief sculpture than Renaissance perspective.
6. Framing and exclusion
Crucially, Stieglitz frames the scene so that:
No horizon is visible
The ship feels sealed, self-contained
The frame cuts off bodies and structures abruptly
This denial of contextual space intensifies the sense of containment and hierarchy. The photograph feels intentionally incomplete—forcing the viewer to engage with structure rather than narrative.
7. Light as articulation, not atmosphere
Light is used descriptively, not emotionally:
Bright whites above
Muted, darker tones below
Clear separation of planes through tonal contrast
There is no soft pictorial haze. Light clarifies edges and reinforces geometry, further aligning the image with straight photography.
8. Why this composition was radical
For 1907, this was extraordinary because:
There is no central subject
Meaning emerges from relationships, not from action
The photograph rewards sustained looking rather than instant comprehension
Stieglitz doesn’t illustrate class division—he builds it into the frame.
In short
The composition of The Steerage works because it:
Subordinates narrative to structure
Treats people and objects as equal visual elements
Uses geometry to generate meaning
It is a photograph about seeing, before it is a photograph about society—which is precisely why it became foundational for modern photography.
Comparing Stieglitz’s The Steerage (1907) with later street photography reveals how a single photograph quietly established many of the genre’s core principles—long before the term “street photography” existed.
I’ll structure this around seeing, timing, form, and meaning, then draw specific parallels.
1. From deliberate framing to the “found moment”
The Steerage
Stieglitz does not stage the scene
He recognises a complex visual order already present
The photograph comes from perception, not intervention
This anticipates the street photographer’s belief that the world arranges itself, and the photographer’s task is to recognise structure within apparent chaos.
Later street photography
Henri Cartier-Bresson calls this the decisive moment
Garry Winogrand embraces disorder but frames it precisely
Joel Meyerowitz speaks of “composing on the run”
The lineage is clear: The Steerage replaces pictorial construction with instant recognition.
2. Composition first, subject second
The Steerage
No single protagonist
People function as visual elements
Meaning emerges from relationships within the frame
Paul Strand (1910s–20s)
Early street portraits and city scenes share this approach
Figures are embedded within architectural structure
Walker Evans (1930s)
Subway portraits and street scenes rely on frontal, formal balance
Social meaning arises from composition, not gesture
This marks a shift away from anecdote toward visual systems.
3. Geometry as a carrier of meaning
Stieglitz uses:
Railings = barriers
Levels = hierarchy
Diagonals = tension
Later street photographers inherit this visual logic.
Cartier-Bresson
Grids, staircases, railings as compositional armatures
Human gesture snaps into geometric order
Lee Friedlander
Frames within frames
Visual clutter organised into layered planes
Winogrand
Tilted horizons and aggressive diagonals
Energy created through imbalance
In all cases, geometry is not decorative—it is semantic.
4. Ethical distance and emotional restraint
The Steerage
Observational, not sentimental
No attempt to individualise suffering
Viewpoint maintains distance
Later street photography
Evans’ subway work: anonymity preserved
Winogrand: people seen as part of public performance
Friedlander: the photographer’s presence acknowledged but not moralised
This restraint distinguishes serious street photography from photojournalism or advocacy imagery.
5. Ambiguity over explanation
The Steerage does not tell a story; it offers a structure to interpret.
Later street photography adopts this openness:
No captions needed
Meanings remain unresolved
Viewer completes the image
This is central to modern street photography’s longevity: the image resists closure.
6. The camera as a thinking tool
Stieglitz later said that The Steerage was about “seeing straight.”
That idea becomes foundational:
Strand: the camera clarifies
Evans: the camera describes
Cartier-Bresson: the camera aligns time and form
Street photography evolves not as a genre of events, but as a way of thinking visually in public space.
7. What later street photography adds
Where street photography goes beyond Stieglitz:
Smaller cameras (Leica) enable mobility
Faster shutter speeds allow gesture
Urban modernity becomes more chaotic
But the core remains unchanged:
A photograph made by recognising order within lived, unposed reality.
In summary
The Steerage is not just a precursor to street photography—it is proto-street photography.
It establishes:
Non-intervention
Formal intelligence
Social meaning embedded in structure
Trust in the photographer’s eye
For anyone developing a personal street practice today, it remains a reminder that form is not separate from content—it is the content
A particularly revealing comparison is between Alfred Stieglitz’s The Steerage (1907) and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris (1932)—arguably Cartier-Bresson’s most canonical photograph.
Although separated by 25 years and very different technologies, the two images share a deep structural kinship.
1. Seeing before shooting
The Steerage
Stieglitz recognises an already-existing visual order on the ship
The photograph results from perception, not reaction
Gare Saint-Lazare
Cartier-Bresson recognises a geometric field (fence, ladder, reflection, poster)
He waits until the leaping figure locks into that structure
Key difference
Stieglitz discovers order in a static situation
Cartier-Bresson waits for time to complete the composition
This distinction defines the decisive moment.
2. Geometry as armature
Both photographs are built on strong underlying frameworks.
The Steerage
Railings create horizontal bars
Diagonal gangway cuts the frame
Circular straw hat punctuates rigid structure
Gare Saint-Lazare
Vertical fence bars echo the railings
Ladder provides a diagonal counterforce
Circular puddle reflection mirrors the arc of the jumper
In both, geometry precedes narrative. Human presence activates the structure but does not dominate it.
3. The human figure: integrated, not centred
The Steerage
Figures are dispersed
No protagonist
People act as tonal and spatial weights
Gare Saint-Lazare
One figure dominates, but briefly
The man is mid-air—anonymous, faceless
He becomes a silhouette, a shape
Despite appearances, Cartier-Bresson’s figure is not a character; he is a formal event.
4. Containment and boundaries
Both images rely on barriers.
The Steerage
Railings separate classes
Vertical posts fragment space
Physical containment reinforces social order
Gare Saint-Lazare
Fence blocks the photographer
Water blocks the man
Reflection doubles confinement
In both, restriction intensifies meaning. Freedom exists only within limits.
5. Depth and flattening
The Steerage
Overlapping planes
Flattened, collage-like space
Gare Saint-Lazare
Reflection flattens depth
Poster echoes jumper’s pose, compressing space into surface
This flattening aligns both images with modernist visual thinking rather than classical perspective.
6. Time: latent vs instantaneous
This is where they diverge most clearly.
The Steerage
Time is suspended
The image could exist seconds before or after
Meaning is structural and enduring
Gare Saint-Lazare
Time is critical
A fraction of a second later the image collapses
Meaning is temporal and fleeting
Street photography evolves here—from recognised structure to recognised instant.
7. What Cartier-Bresson inherits from Stieglitz
Directly or indirectly, Cartier-Bresson inherits:
Trust in intuition
Primacy of composition
Refusal of sentimentality
Belief that the photograph is complete at exposure
What he adds is time as a compositional element.
In essence
If The Steerage teaches us how to see,
Gare Saint-Lazare teaches us when to release the shutter.
Together, they form the conceptual backbone of modern street photography:
structure + intuition + timing.
Let’s do this with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Hyères, France (1932)—a quieter, less theatrical image than Gare Saint-Lazare, and in many ways a closer descendant of Stieglitz’s The Steerage.
The pairing
Alfred Stieglitz — The Steerage, 1907
Henri Cartier-Bresson — Hyères, France, 1932 (the cyclist descending the spiral street)
This comparison reveals how street photography evolves without losing structural discipline.
1. Vantage point: elevated, detached, analytical
The Steerage
Shot from above, looking down
Photographer is physically and socially removed
The view encourages structural reading before empathy
Hyères
Shot from a balcony or stairwell
Cartier-Bresson positions himself outside the flow
The cyclist enters a pre-seen frame
Both photographers choose a vantage point that prioritises pattern recognition over participation.
2. Architecture as the primary subject
In both images, architecture precedes action.
The Steerage
Ship becomes a scaffold of rails, posts, stairs
People are secondary, absorbed into form
Hyères
Curving street, wall, and staircase dominate
The cyclist is a graphic accent
In neither image does human presence explain the photograph—it completes it.
3. The curve versus the diagonal
A key formal contrast:
The Steerage
Driven by diagonals and hard angles
Tension, division, hierarchy
Hyères
Dominated by curves
Continuous flow, visual rhythm
Yet both rely on a single dominant line that governs the image:
Gangway (Stieglitz)
Spiral street (Cartier-Bresson)
4. Timing as refinement, not spectacle
The Steerage
Time is extended
The image could be remade repeatedly
Hyères
Time matters, but subtly
The cyclist must be exactly there—not earlier, not later
This is decisive moment without drama: timing serves formal alignment, not narrative climax.
5. Figure as punctuation
In both works, the human figure acts as visual punctuation.
The Steerage
The straw hat and clustered bodies stabilise the composition
Hyères
The cyclist is a moving dot
He anchors the curve, giving scale and direction
Remove the figures, and both images lose coherence.
6. Emotional tone: cool, lucid, unsentimental
Neither photograph asks for sympathy.
No faces confront the viewer
No story is resolved
Meaning is observational
This is crucial to the street tradition: clarity over commentary.
7. What changes between 1907 and 1932
What stays the same
Faith in intuition
Composition discovered, not imposed
Trust in the frame
What evolves
Mobility (handheld Leica)
Speed
Integration of time as a shaping force
Cartier-Bresson doesn’t abandon Stieglitz—he compresses him.
In summary
If The Steerage is about recognising structure,
Hyères is about waiting for life to enter that structure.
This quieter lineage is arguably more important to modern street photography than dramatic moments, because it shows that:
the strongest street photographs are often built before anything happens