The Hand of Man
1902
Medium
Photogravure
Dimensions
Image: 24.2 × 31.8 cm (9 9/16 × 12 9/16 in.); Paper: 30 × 37.7 cm (11 13/16 × 14 7/8 in.); Mount: 35 × 50 cm (13 13/16 × 19 11/16 in.)
Classification
photogravure
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
66749
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This photograph taken from the back of a moving train was published in the first issue of Camera Work, in January 1903. A note on the pictures in that issue explained the image not as a contrast between man and machine, but as a link between art and the everyday: “The Hand of Man . . . is an attempt to treat pictorially a subject which enters so much into our daily lives that we are apt to lose sight of the pictorial possibilities of the commonplace.” For more on the Alfred Stieglitz collection...
About the Artist
Alfred Stieglitz · 1864–1946
Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was a pioneering American photographer, art dealer, publisher, and advocate for the Modernist movement who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to German Jewish immigrant parents, Stieglitz spent his formative years studying mechanical engineering in Berlin, where he discovered photography in ...