Self-Portrait

May 1896

Vice-president of the new Camera Club

In May 1896 two organisations merged to form the Camera Club of New York; offered the presidency, Stieglitz became vice-president instead and was involved in every aspect of the club. Late that year he hand-pulled the photogravures for the first portfolio of his own work, Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies.

July 1897

First issue of Camera Notes

Stieglitz turned the Camera Club's newsletter into a magazine, Camera Notes, with full control over it; the first issue appeared in July 1897, and it was soon considered the finest photographic magazine in the world. The critic Sadakichi Hartmann wrote that artistic photography, the Camera Club and Alfred Stieglitz seemed to him three names for one and the same thing.

27 September 1898

Daughter born: Katherine Stieglitz

May 1899

A one-man show of 87 prints

In May 1899 the Camera Club gave Stieglitz a one-man exhibition of eighty-seven prints. Preparing it while producing Camera Notes took a toll on his health; he brought in his friends Joseph Keiley and Dallet Fuguet, who were not Club members, as associate editors, and older members began campaigning against him, embroiling him throughout 1900 in protracted administrative battles.

1901

Breakdown and resignation from Camera Notes

Worn down by the strain of managing the Camera Club, in 1901 Stieglitz collapsed in the first of several mental breakdowns and spent much of the summer recuperating at Oaklawn, the family home on Lake George. Back in New York, he announced his resignation as editor of Camera Notes.