Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand Masterworks from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Malcolm R. Daniel

Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), Edward Steichen (1879-1973), and Paul Strand (1890-1976) are among the most famous photographers of the 20th century. This handsome volume showcases for the first time The Metropolitan Museum's extraordinarily rich holdings of works by these diverse and groundbreaking masters. A passionate advocate for photography and modern art promoted through his "Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession" (also known as "291") and his sumptuous journal "Camera Work", Stieglitz was also a photographer of supreme accomplishment. Featured works by Stieglitz include portraits, landscapes, city views, and cloud studies, along with photographs from Stieglitz's composite portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe (selected by O'Keeffe herself for the Museum). Perhaps best known as a fashion photographer, celebrity portraitist, and MoMA curator, Steichen was, at the turn of the century, Stieglitz's man in Paris, gallery collaborator, and most talented exemplar of Photo-Secessionist photography. Steichen's three large variant prints of The Flatiron and his moonlit photographs of Rodin's Balzac are highlighted here. Marking a pivotal moment in the course of photography, the final issue of "Camera Work" (1916) was devoted to the young Paul Strand, whose photographs from 1915 and 1916 treated three principal themes - movement in the city, abstractions, and street portraits - and pioneered a shift from the soft-focus Pictorialist aesthetic to the straight approach and graphic power of an emerging modernism. This book reproduces Strand's rare large platinum prints, most of them unique exhibition prints of images popularly known only as Camera Work photogravures. The rarely exhibited masterpieces gathered together in Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand are among the crown jewels of the Metropolitan's photography collection.

Malcolm Daniel is Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

‘A beautifully produced catalogue of the “big three” of early 20th-century American photography.’
-Prudence Hone, The Guardian

‘A rare chance to see the three photographers who broke new ground for early practitioners.’
-Lucy Davis, Daily Telegraph