Alfred Stieglitz (; January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century, where he introduced many avant-garde European artists to the U.S. He was married to painter Georgia O'Keeffe.
Stieglitz was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, the first son of German Jewish immigrants Edward Stieglitz (1833–1909) and Hedwig Ann Werner (1845–1922). His father was a lieutenant in the Union Army and worked as a wool merchant. He had five siblings, Flora (1865–1890), twins Julius (1867–1937) and Leopold (1867–1956), Agnes (1869–1952) and Selma (1871–1957). Alfred Stieglitz, seeing the close relationship of the twins, wished he had a soul mate of his own during his childhood.
Stieglitz attended Charlier Institute, a Christian school in New York, in 1871. The following year, his family began spending the summers at Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains, a tradition that continued into Stieglitz's adulthood.
So that he could qualify for admission to the City College of New York, Stieglitz was enrolled in a public school for his junior year of high school, but found the education inadequate. In 1881, Edward Stieglitz sold his company for US $400,000 and moved his family to Europe for the next several years so that his children would receive a better education. Alfred Stieglitz enrolled in the Real Gymnasium in Karlsruhe. The next year, Alfred Stieglitz studied mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. He enrolled in a chemistry class taught by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, a scientist and researcher, who worked on the chemical processes for developing photographs. In Vogel, Stieglitz found both the academic challenge he needed and an outlet for his growing artistic and cultural interests. He received an allowance of $1,200 (equivalent to $40,034 in 2025) a year.
In 1884, his parents returned to America, but 20-year-old Stieglitz remained in Germany and collected books on photography and photographers in Europe and the U.S. He bought his first camera, an 8 × 10 plate film camera, and traveled through the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. He took photographs of landscapes and workers in the countryside. Photography, he later wrote, "fascinated me, first as a toy, then as a passion, then as an obsession."
Through his self-study, he saw photography as an art form. In 1887, he wrote his very first article, "A Word or Two about Amateur Photography in Germany", for the new magazine Amateur Photographer.
He won first place for his photograph The Last Joke, Bellagio from Amateur Photographer in 1887. The next year he won both first and second prizes in the same competition, and his reputation began to spread, as several German and British photographic magazines published his work.
In 1890, his sister Flora died while giving birth, and Stieglitz returned to New York.
New York and the Camera Club (1891–1901)
Stieglitz considered himself an artist, but he refused to sell his photographs. His father purchased a small photography business for him so that he could earn a living in his chosen profession. Because he demanded high quality images and paid his employee high wages, the Photochrome Engraving Company rarely made a profit.
In late 1892, Stieglitz bought his first hand-held camera, a Folmer and Schwing 4×5 plate film camera. Stieglitz gained a reputation for his photography and his magazine articles about how photography is a form of art. In the spring of 1893, he became co-editor of The American Amateur Photographer. In order to avoid the appearance of bias in his opinions and because Photochrome was now printing the photogravures for the magazine, Stieglitz refused to draw a salary.
On November 16, 1893, the 29-year-old Stieglitz married 20-year-old Emmeline Obermeyer, the sister of his close friend and business associate Joe Obermeyer and granddaughter of brewer Samuel Liebmann. They were married in New York City. Stieglitz later wrote that he did not love Emmy, as she was commonly known, when they were married and that their marriage was not consummated for at least a year. Daughter of a wealthy brewery owner, she had inherited money from her father. Stieglitz came to regret his decision to marry Emmy, as she did not share his artistic and cultural interests. Stieglitz biographer Richard Whelan summed up their relationship by saying Stieglitz "resented her bitterly for not becoming his twin." Throughout his life Stieglitz maintained a desire for younger women.
Stieglitz was unanimously elected as one of the first two American members of the British photographic society, The Linked Ring. Stieglitz saw this recognition as the impetus he needed to step up his cause of promoting artistic photography in the United States.
In May 1896, the two organizations joined to form The Camera Club of New York. Although offered the organization's presidency, he became vice-president. He developed programs for the club and was involved in all aspects of the organization. He told journalist Theodore Dreiser he wanted to "make the club so large, its labors so distinguished and its authority so final that [it] may satisfactorily use its great prestige to compel recognition for the individual artists without and within its walls."
Stieglitz turned the Camera Club's current newsletter into a magazine, Camera Notes, and was given full control over the new publication. Its first issue was published in July 1897. It was soon considered the finest photographic magazine in the world. Over the next four years Stieglitz used Camera Notes to champion his belief in photography as an art form by including articles on art and aesthetics next to prints by some of the leading American and European photographers. Critic Sadakichi Hartmann wrote "it seemed to me that artistic photography, the Camera Club and Alfred Stieglitz were only three names for one and the same thing."
He also continued to take his own photographs. Late in 1896, he hand-pulled the photogravures for a first portfolio of his own work, Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies. He continued to exhibit in shows in Europe and the U.S., and by 1898 he had gained a solid reputation as a photographer. He was paid $75 (equivalent to $2,903 in 2025) for his favorite print, Winter – Fifth Avenue.
On September 27, 1898, Stieglitz's daughter, Katherine "Kitty", was born. Using Emmy's inheritance, the couple hired a governess, cook and a chambermaid. Stieglitz worked at the same pace as before the birth of his daughter, and as a result, the couple predominantly lived separate lives under the same roof.
In May 1899, Stieglitz was given a one-man exhibition, consisting of eighty-seven prints, at the Camera Club. The strain of preparing for this show, coupled with the continuing efforts to produce Camera Notes, took a toll on Stieglitz's health. To lessen his burden he brought in his friends Joseph Keiley and Dallet Fuguet, neither of whom were members of the Camera Club, as associate editors of Camera Notes. Upset by this intrusion from outsiders, not to mention their own diminishing presence in the Club's publication, many of the older members of the Club began to actively campaign against Stieglitz's editorial authority. Stieglitz spent most of 1900 finding ways to outmaneuver these efforts, embroiling him in protracted administrative battles.