Taken while on a trip with his wife Emmeline in 1907, Stieglitz’s photograph, The Steerage, remains iconic to this day. Among the reasons for its lasting importance, the image demonstrates Stieglitz’s crucial departure from his earlier championing of Pictorialism, a departure that arguably helped set the trajectory for much of Modern photography thereafter. Gone were the foundations of Pictorialism: a central subject, a clear horizon, staged compositions, soft focus and feathery printing. The Steerage rebukes each of those, whereby a series of sharp diagonals energetically slice through the seemingly chaotic scene and converge into a striking and sharp congregation of lines of shapes.

Stieglitz may be photography’s leading 20th century advocate, having edited the luxurious photographic journal Camera Work from 1902 until 1917, and pioneering the exhibition space familiarly known as ‘291’ with Edward Steichen beginning in 1905. Until the time The Steerage was made, all of Stieglitz’s photography related enterprises promoted the propagation of painterly devices that blurred the lines between photography and fine art. The Steerage represents a pivot in Stieglitz’s personal oeuvre towards a new type of photography, more direct and more representative of the fast-paced energy of modern life.