Georgia O'Keeffe

1929

O'Keeffe leaves for New Mexico

In 1929 O'Keeffe moved to New Mexico, where she created her famous series of desert landscapes and gained recognition and financial security. When she returned to New York, Stieglitz's affair with his pupil Dorothy Norman was over, but they could not restore their former relationship.

1929

His gallery to be demolished: depression at Lake George

In early 1929 Stieglitz was told that the building housing his gallery would be torn down. After a final show of Demuth's work in May he retreated to Lake George exhausted and depressed, and when the Strands raised nearly sixteen thousand dollars for a new gallery he reacted harshly, saying it was time for the “young ones” to do some of the work.

15 December 1929

Opens An American Place

On December 15, 1929, Stieglitz opened An American Place, the largest gallery he had ever managed, with the first darkroom of his own in the city. For sixteen years he showed his friends Marin, Demuth, Hartley, Dove and Strand there, and O'Keeffe received at least one major exhibition each year.

1932

A forty-year retrospective of 127 works

In 1932 Stieglitz mounted a forty-year retrospective of 127 of his works at An American Place. Next to his portraits of his young lover Dorothy Norman he deliberately hung recent photographs of O'Keeffe, who looked older than her forty-five years, one of the few times he acted spitefully towards her in public, perhaps a result of their arguments about his control over her art.

1932

Break with Paul Strand

Later in 1932 Stieglitz showed O'Keeffe's works next to amateurish paintings on glass by Rebecca Salsbury and published no catalogue, which the Strands took as an insult. Paul Strand never forgave him: the day he walked out of An American Place in 1932, he said, was no less good than the day he walked into 291 in 1907.

1934

Credo: “straight” photography without tricks

In 1934 Stieglitz explained: “Personally I like my photography straight, unmanipulated, devoid of all tricks; a print not looking like anything but a photograph, living through its own inherent qualities and revealing its own spirit.”