Description: horse drawn trolley; man wearing hat and coat with back to viewer in center; word "Harlem" on top of trolley; urban scene
Label Text: In 1893 photographer Alfred Stieglitz was given a new 4 x 5 hand-held camera that revolutionized his ability to respond to events. Although a proponent of the merits of the untouched, direct photograph, Stieglitz here, as in many other works, adopted some of the popular Pictorialist techniques and tempered the composition with naturally occurring steam (in other photographs he used snow, rain, or mist). This startlingly immediate photograph with the ephemeral yet highly tangible steam, solid still figures of the man and his horses, and vigorous, almost chaotic movement, was taken the day after a snowstorm and depicts a trolley driver watering his horses. While in some ways a photograph of a beautifully teeming city caught between the powers of man and nature, this photograph also reveals a strong personal relationship with New York. In 1890 Stieglitz returned from a decade in Europe; his subsequent loneliness and alienation in a city that no longer felt like his own seem reflected in the faceless figures and modern urban subject. These photographs of New York became his search for humanity in an unfamiliar city; he would later say that this image was "the first human thing [he] saw in New York." Stieglitz would go on to become one of the most important champions of modern photography as owner of the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession (opened 1905) and publisher of the photographic journals Camera Notes (1897-1901) and later Camera Work (1903-1917).
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