Waldo Frank
1920
Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
sheet (trimmed to image): 10.8 × 7.8 cm (4 1/4 × 3 1/16 in.) mount: 34.2 × 27.3 cm (13 7/16 × 10 3/4 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Alfred Stieglitz Collection
Accession Number
1949.3.502
Art Historical Context
Alfred Stieglitz's *Waldo Frank* (192) is an intimate portrait of the American novelist, essayist, and cultural critic Waldo Frank, captured in a gelatin silver print. Stieglitz, a photographer and gallerist, photographed Frank amid New York's vibrant modernist scene, where he championed photography as a fine art through his Gallery 291. This small, trimmed image (10.8 × 7.8 cm) mounted on a larger sheet (34.2 × 27.3 cm) exemplifies Stieglitz's shift toward "straight photography," clarity and emotional directness over pictorialist manipulation. The gelatin silver process, widely used by 1920,...
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 ...