Pensacola Beach, FL

Look back through the lens at photographer Alfred Stieglitz Imagine writing a biography about a famous family member—and one that not only offers precise factual detail but also reveals intimate family attachments and upheavals.With the ease of an outsider as well as the affectionate sense that only family blood lines impart, writer Sue Davidson Lowe captures all that is Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz: A Memoir/Biography by Sue Davidson Lowe # 0-87846-649-5 artWorks 22.50 2 pp Told through her own personal lens, Stieglitz’s grandniece carefully traces one man’s life and vast contribution to American photography in Stieglitz: A Memoir/Biography. Alfred Stieglitz grew up among the privileged. Torn over his father’s infidelities with the family chambermaid as well as living through the firsthand toxic effects of parents wrangling over money, young Alfred made a personal commitment to lead a “spartan” existence—and that he did. Lowe’s story follows Stieglitz through his student years in Berlin in the early 1880’s. In graceful pose, the author writes, “in essence, Alfred was his own university; here the loner characterization becomes apt. He worked, he said, like one possessed, asking nobody’s direction except in the study of chemistry and psychics.” Taking a break from his studies, Stieglitz eyed a large black cube with a lens for sale in a storefront window. He paid $7.50 for his first camera and never looked back. In his early twenties, Alfred’s photographic work was already garnering awards and he was gaining the respect of fellow European artists, many of them considerably older than himself. Where America considered photography a mere scientific medium, Europeans recognized and celebrated it as a valid art form. Fresh from his newfound appreciation of photography in Europe, Alfred returned home where he would spend his entire life pioneering and championing the artistic value of photography in the United States. Stieglitz founded two significant artistic publications. The first was “Camera Work,” of which he served as editor. This magazine included a variety of contributions from such renowned writers such as George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein, H. G. Wells, and Oscar Wilde. The second was “Camera Notes.” Steiglitz was publisher, proofreader, and even mailing clerk of this renowned magazine. From a photographic standpoint, Stieglitz began shifting his focus in 1914 from capturing street scenes of New York to portrait work. The author relates how Stieglitz turned down a lucrative job offer from Eastman Kodak, opting instead to place his energies into New York-based gallery venues that provided a haven for emerging artists and photographers. His “291” and “American Place” galleries became showplaces for exhibitions by such artists as Cézanne, Matisse, and O’ Keeffe. Establishing photographic precedents was a Stieglitz trademark. He persuaded the Boston Museum of Art to buy photographs for its permanent collection— as the biographer terms it, “the first museum in the country to take the step.” In 1924 the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired 27 of Stieglitz’s works, a landmark advancement in the artistic evolution of American photography. If the city provided the exhilaration and the artists, it was Lake George that provided Stieglitz a true retreat for recharging his energies. This book is chalked full of family archival photographs and brimming with revealing anecdotes. Twenty-one summers with “Uncle Al” at “the Farmhouse” in Lake George fostered endless memories for the author and her older sister, Peggy. The two girls would walk with their great uncle into town. While Peggy chose strawberry, the writer and her opted for chocolate-flavored ice cream cones. This memoir offers further compelling insight into family summers at the Lake. Lowe writes, “it was anything but peaceful. It was a three-ring circus.” Stieglitz began to photograph American painter Georgia O’Keeffe. “She,” recalls the author, “the most private of persons, was constantly on display, albeit at the time only to the three loving eyes of Alfred and his camera.” A deep romance developed. Stieglitz eventually divorced his first wife of over two decades and married O’Keeffe in 1924. Yet, through it all, Lowe shares, “eventually, Alfred’s attachment to Lake George would rival his attachment to New York City, to his camera, and indeed to any woman— Georgia O’Keeffe included.” Though a family member, once again the writer demonstrates a solid balance of biographical objectivity in dealing with Stieglitz’s shortcomings. During their married life, O’Keeffe lived away at times, painting in Taos. Soon thereafter, an adoring photographic model, Dorothy Norman, began to occupy Alfred’s time and attention. Lowe says that after 12 years with Alfred, Georgia had learned to put up with his “flirtations—and probably his flings.” With clear and polished prose and a rich fluidity of language, Sue Davidson Lowe offers revealing passages and stories about this country’s photographic pioneer and the birth of an American art form in Stieglitz: A Memoir/Biography. his book seizes all the shots — the highs and the lows — and is the definitive read on Stieglitz. ––––––––––––––––––––––– Elisabeth A. Doehring serves as book review editor for the “Gulf Breeze News” and “Splash! Magazine.” She is an award-winning writer and a member of the National Book Critics Circle, Southern Book Critics Circle, and Women’s National Book Association. Her works appear in newspapers and literary magazines with in the states of Florida, Alabama, and Kentucky.