Artist, showman, publicist and visionary-photography would not be the same without Alfred Stieglitz.
Tireless in his support of the medium, he showcased the finest work he could find-his own and that of others-in his famous gallery on New York`s Fifth Avenue. He helped put the photograph on an equal footing with painting and sculpture, and gave direction and definition to 20th Century photography. But he was not the type of fellow to invite the public into his darkroom. (With his severe demeanor and his long black cape, he looked more like a Puritan divine than a modern artist. Or he did until artists began dressing in black, looking more and more like Stieglitz.)
Now, with the help of Sarah Greenough, curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, we have that opportunity, courtesy of an exhibition entitled ”Stieglitz in the Darkroom.” The show, which runs through Feb. 14., is a companion to a similar exhibition last year of the work of Walker Evans. Greenough concentrated on the photographs Evans took in the New York subways, showing how he would crop and recrop the same negative, making it now a square, now a horizontal, including one or two or three people from the same frame in a print. The exhibition neatly pointed out that there is no one right way to frame a photograph, not even one by Walker Evans.
Now Greenough has returned to the same small space occupied by the Evans show-two rooms off to one side of the East Building`s large entrance hall-for an exhibit that offers a similarly privileged view of Stieglitz`s pictures.
Greenough`s strategy this time is more ambitious. Visitors again can watch Stieglitz crop the same negative in a variety of ways. But they will also see him experiment with different kinds of paper (platinum, palladium, silver gelatin), different printing processes (carbon prints, photogravure)
and various darkroom techniques (solarization, toning and the elimination of distracting elements) to achieve his results.
The show offers a brief education in printing methods, an insight into the way a master of the medium achieves his effects and a bit of darkroom magic. It is an exhibition that will appeal to the connoisseur and the casual visitor alike-no easy feat, but a worthy goal in an institution like the National Gallery.
This show is possible, by the way, only because of the generosity and foresight of Georgia O`Keeffe, who presented a key set of Stieglitz`s pictures to the National Gallery in 1949 and augmented it again in 1980. The collection, which now numbers 1,600 works, includes one of each of the mounted prints in Stieglitz`s possession at his death in 1946. In addition, if there were variant croppings or prints on different papers, O`Keeffe rightly included an example of each.
This gives Greenough-and through her, all of us-access to the fullest possible range of Stieglitz`s experiments. Before he was a visionary, he was a trained chemist, and his interest in and understanding of the scientific aspects of the medium are quite apparent here. Vision without technique is nothing, the show quietly suggests.
Greenough`s methods are nicely displayed in a grouping of three prints just inside the entrance to the exhibit. All three are based on the same photograph Stieglitz took in Venice in 1894, and the three versions display a variety of processess (the smooth and silky finish of a platinum print, the coarser texture and muddier blacks of a gravure made the following year and the more contemporary finish of a silver gelatin print made 30 years later). Equally striking is the cropping: a tighter crop emphasizes the abstract design of a gondola, the surrounding buildings and their reflection in the canal; a looser cropping gives a stronger sense of the locale. The shape of the print, the proportions of the picture`s elements and the printing method work together to fulfill Stieglitz`s shifting intentions.
This is the method Greenough follows throughout the show: a small group of prints-two, three or four-of the same scene are exhibited, along with a wall text that points out the very subtle variations among the prints.
”The Steerage,” for example, is presented three times: in a silver gelatin print and two larger photogravures, one printed on Japan tissue and one on vellum. This is one of Stieglitz`s most famous pictures, often exhibited and often reproduced, but seldom does a viewer have the chance to compare the warm browns and pale pink highlights of the Japan tissue print with the blacker and bolder tones of the vellum print. It`s a rare treat.
Other groupings show Stieglitz adding touches of color to a night scene, eliminating foreground details in another (a white piling in ”Outward Bound, The Mauretania”) and rotating his negative 90 degrees between prints, in a photograph of O`Keeffe`s hands and in one of his ”Equivalents,” the pictures of clouds he took late in his life.
The most compelling grouping, however, is based on another photograph he made in Europe in 1894, of two women crossing a town square. Behind them is a church and off to the left of the frame is what appears to be a large manor house.
Stieglitz made a photogravure of the negative in 1894 and cropped it to include only the two women and the church. He entitled it ”The Hour of Prayer,” and its warm brown tones give it an old-fashioned feeling. Thirty years later, Stieglitz returned to the negative, and the cool blacks of the silver print give it a contemporary feel, appropriate to the title Stieglitz has attached to it: ”Scurrying Home.”
It is the same negative, but what a difference there is between the two pictures. What was a vertical is now a horizontal, making the church less important, just another element in a broader view. The two women who looked like penitents rushing to church now look like tired peasants after a long day of work. Through a bit of darkroom manipulation, the Old World has been transformed into the New.
The pleasures of this exhibit extend beyond the insights into Stieglitz`s mind and working habits. There is a genuine pleasure in the organization and the mounting of the exhibit, too. This includes the introductory wall texts, which offer a brief introduction to the photographer his printing processes, and a 16-page brochure that outlines Stieglitz`s professional life.
Greenough also knows how to mount an exhibit, in a way that provides intellectual and aesthetic satisfaction. There is a quiet, classical balance to her shows (evident, too, in the Evans exhibit) that is the product of considerable thought and great care. How pictures are placed on a wall-how they relate to the pictures on adjoining and opposite walls-may not seem that important, but it helps explain why some shows work and others do not.
