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James Nares: Street (00:02:17) 17811 views
Two Towers - New York
Going to the Post, Morris Park
The Street, Fifth Avenue
Nearing Land
Katherine
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As proprietor of the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession and editor of the photographic journals Camera Notes and Camera Work, Stieglitz was a major force in the promotion and elevation of photography as a fine art in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His own photographs had an equally revolutionary impact on the advancement of the medium.The Hand of Man was first published in January 1903 in the inaugural issue of Camera Work. With this image of a lone locomotive chugging through the train yards of Long Island City, Stieglitz showed that a gritty urban landscape could have an atmospheric beauty and a symbolic value as potent as those of an unspoiled natural landscape. The title alludes to this modern transformation of the landscape and also perhaps to photography itself as a mechanical process. Stieglitz believed that a mechanical instrument such as the camera could be transformed into a tool for creating art when guided by the hand and sensibility of an artist.
Inscription: Inscribed and signed in pencil on print, recto LL in margin: " "The Hand of Man" 1904 // Alfred Stieglitz"
Alfred Stieglitz
This gravure was made from an enlarged copy negative. Although the artist inscribed the date "1904", the negative is known to have been made in 1902. The inscription therefore likely dates from c. 1913.Per conversation between Malcom Daniel and Peter Bunnell (February 2002), the railroad yards depicted are in Long Island City, New York. Photograph published in Scribner's, March 1903.
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