The Flatiron

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.

1902

Founds the Photo-Secession

In December 1901 Charles DeKay of the National Arts Club invited Stieglitz to put together an exhibition with “full power to follow his own inclinations”. Within two months he had assembled prints from a close circle of friends and, in homage to the Munich photographers, called the group the Photo-Secession, a secession not only from the artistic restrictions of the era but from the official oversight of the Camera Club.

December 1902

First issue of Camera Work

Having fully left Camera Notes, in December 1902 Stieglitz published the first issue of the independent magazine Camera Work, with hand-pulled photogravures, criticism and essays on art (other accounts date it from 1903). The gravures were so fine that when a set of prints failed to arrive for a Photo-Secession exhibition in Brussels, gravures from the magazine were hung instead, and most viewers took them for the original photographs.

25 November 1905

The 291 gallery opens on Fifth Avenue

On November 25, 1905, the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession opened at 291 Fifth Avenue with one hundred prints by thirty-nine photographers; Edward Steichen had encouraged Stieglitz to lease the three rooms across from his own apartment. The gallery was an instant success, with almost fifteen thousand visitors in its first season and print sales of nearly $2,800, more than half of them Steichen's work.

1907

Paris: Gertrude Stein and a turn to painting

In Paris in 1907 Stieglitz met Gertrude Stein and was captivated by Rodin, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne and Rousseau. He decided to turn his photography gallery into a full art gallery to introduce the conservative American public to the newest European art.

January 1907

Pamela Colman Smith's drawings at 291

In December 1906 Stieglitz met the 28-year-old artist Pamela Colman Smith and decided to show her drawings and watercolours, thinking it “highly instructive to compare drawings and photographs”. Her show, which opened in January 1907, drew far more visitors than any previous photography show, and all her works were sold.