Quote

The goal of art was the vital expression of self.

Alfred Stieglitz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alfred Stieglitz
Age: 81 †
Born: 1864
Born: January 1
Died: 1946
Died: January 1
Exhibition Curator
Photographer
Photography Critic
Publisher
Hoboken
New Jersey
Alfred Steiglitz
Art
Self
Vital
Photographer
Expression
Goal

More quotes by Alfred Stieglitz

Image
I do not object to retouching, dodging or accentuation as long as they do not interfere with the natural qualities of photographic technique.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
Before the people at large, and for that matter, the artists themselves, understand what photography really means, as I understand that term, it is essential for them to be taught the real meaning of art.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
The camera was waiting for me by predestination and I took to it as a musician takes to the piano or a painter to canvas. I found that I was master of the elements, that I could work miracles.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
I was sad to leave Europe in 1890, after my student days in Germany... But then, once back in New York, I experienced an intense longing for Europe, for its vital tradition of music, theatre, art, craftsmanship... I felt bewildered and lonely. How was I to use myself?
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
The ability to make a truly artistic photograph is not acquired off-hand, but is the result of an artistic instinct coupled with years of labor.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
Wherever there is light, one can photograph.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
All art, like all love, is rooted in heartache.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
If you place the imperfect next to the perfect, people will see the difference between the one and the other. But if you offer the imperfect alone, people are only too apt to be satisfied by it.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
As a matter of fact, nearly all the greatest work is being, and has always been done, by those who are following photography for the love of it, and not merely for financial reasons. As the name implies, an amateur is one who works for love.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
Technically perfect, pictorially rotten. (Stieglitz's standard comment on photographs he rejected for publication in The American Amateur Photographer.)
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
It is not art in the professionalized sense about which I care, but that which is created sacredly, as a result of a deep inner experience, with all of oneself, and that becomes 'art' in time.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
Let me here call attention to one of the most universally popular mistakes that have to do with photography - that of classing supposedly excellent work as professional, and using the term amateur to convey the idea of immature productions and to excuse atrociously poor photographs.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
All I want is to preserve that wonderful something which so purely exists between us.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
Snow. White, white, white, soft and clean, and maddening shapes, with the whole world in them.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
The arts equally have distinct departments, and unless photography has its own possibilities of expression, separate from those of the other arts, it is merely a process, not an art.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
I have all but killed myself for Photography. My passion for it is greater than ever. It's forty years that I have fought its fight... I am not fighting to make a 'name' for myself. Maybe you have some feeling for what the fight is for. It's a world's fight... All that's born of spirit seems mad in these days of materialism run riot.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
A work is not art until enough noise has been made about it and someone rich comes along and buys it.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
The scene fascinated me: a round straw hat the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right the white drawbridge, its railings made of chain white suspenders crossed on the back of a man below circular iron machinery a mast that cut into the sky, completing a triangle.
Alfred Stieglitz
Image
There are many schools of painting. Why should there not be many schools of photographic art? There is hardly a right and a wrong in these matters, but there is truth, and that should form the basis of all works of art.
Alfred Stieglitz