Portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe

Often considered to be "the father of American photography," Alfred Stieglitz dedicated his career to establishing photography's place among the fine arts. Although he was an advocate of Pictorialism in the early years of the twentieth century, by 1917, he had converted to a resolutely modern approach that embraced the camera's distinctive tonal rendering and clarity of detail. He had also embraced contemporaneous notions about the modern self, which conceived of personal identity as a relative, rather than an absolute, concept. In this view, the constant change and escalating tension characteristic of modern life resulted in multifaceted, even fragmented, individuals. Stieglitz's extended portrait of the painter Georgia O'Keeffe comprised hundreds of photographs made between 1917 and 1925, deftly expressing this idea—and the artist's fascination with his future wife (Stieglitz married O'Keeffe in 1924).