“..the whole development of photography has been given to the world through Camera Work.”- Paul Strand

At the turn of the 20th Century the already esteemed photographer, editor and writer Alfred Stieglitz was working tirelessly to establish photography as a fine art unto itself, battling the older and more traditional views of many that photography was nothing more than a technical tool for documentation. Eventually these efforts led him to self-publish the most famous photography periodical in history. Camera Work chronicled the finest examples of photography of its time and introduced modern European art to American audiences, altering the trajectory and reception of modern art in this country.

While attending school for engineering in Berlin from 1882-1890, Stieglitz had learned photography and was initially influenced mostly by European’s soft-edge and painterly Pictorialist style. Once he returned to his home in New York City in 1890, he became more interested in capturing the energy, movement and at times the harshness of the city. Over the next ten years, numerous groups of photographers throughout Europe and America including the Viennese Photographic Secessionists and The Royal Photographic Society would form, all seeking to use photography and exhibit it as a serious form of versatile artistic expression. During this decade, Stieglitz edited The American Amateur Photographer and was appointed vice president of The Camera Club newly formed in New York as well as the editor of its quarterly journal, Camera Notes, which became the most influential photographic journal in America. Eventually, however, Stieglitz grew frustrated with fighting for editorial control of these publications and departed, pledging to only work for himself going forward.

“American photography is going to be the ruling note throughout the world unless other bestir themselves… It is Stieglitz who arranges terms, gets the pictures together, is responsible for their return. What an influence then he must have become. As one sees him today he is a man of highly nervous temperament, of ceaseless energy and fixed purpose [...]” - Alfred Horsley Hinton, Editor of The Amateur Photographer (1904)

In 1902, after a summer in Lake George spent considering where and how to turn his attention and expend his seemingly endless energy, he printed a two-page brochure promising to launch a journal that would be ‘the best and most sumptuous of photographic publications.’ For this ambitious and completely self-published journal, Camera Work, he asked his friend and fellow-photographer Edward Steichen to design the cover. Steichen’s Art Nouveau typeface was designed specifically for the journal.

The texts written in Camera Work review exhibitions and explore themes in photography and the other arts. By 1905 he had opened his gallery, first named Little Galleries and then 291, and the journal’s reproductions and articles began to be inevitably influenced by his gallery’s programming. The focus of the journal, however, was certainly the hand-pulled photogravures that graced the pages of each issue. Each was printed onto Japanese tissue using the respective artists’ negative, or if not possible, an original print. Each gravure is thus considered an original print.

Demonstrating Stieglitz’s reverence for the medium, he oversaw each step of the printing process and made sure all nuance and tonal variation was achieved according to his high standards and finely developed eye. Though laborious, the journal’s lasting brilliance, even when viewed over 100 years after being made, is owed to the quality of these gravures. Beyond overseeing the production of the images and closely editing the thoughtful articles featured in each issue, Stieglitz even oftentimes personally designed the advertisements at the back of the journal.

During Camera Work’s existence from 1903 to 1917, the curation of images shifted periodically, in line with the changes in exhibition programming at 291. After his visits to Europe in 1907 and 1909, Stieglitz started exhibiting more European art in his gallery and also featuring it in the journal. In issue number 32, from October of 1910, nudes by Matisse were included, apparently not to an extremely receptive subscription base, as many subsequently cancelled their subscriptions. Later, in 1911, number 34/35 was a special Rodin issue, and later a special issue in 1912 was devoted to Matisse and Picasso – the first issue without a single photograph reproduced in it. The final two issues were dedicated to Paul Strand entirely, as Stieglitz saw Strand’s work as resonant with the geometric abstraction of Picasso’s work that he was most responsive to at the time. Printed on a thicker paper, with a harder-edged ink than the Japanese tissue had provided, this final issue was a definitive declaration of his separation with Pictorialism.

At the time of its announcement, an impressive 68 subscriptions were received to Camera Work. Although the endeavor was never commercial and indeed only cost Stieglitz money, 1000 copies of each issue were printed for most of the journal’s existence; only for the final two issues did Stieglitz reduce the number to 500 for financial reasons. Complete sets of Camera Work, with the Steichen Supplement, the two Special Numbers, and all in the original wrappers, are extremely rare with only four other such complete sets having come to auction over the last twenty years. This complete set is contained in twenty-five custom-made contemporary linen clamshell boxes, each with a silver-stamped leather label on the spine.