Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) was an American photographer and gallerist who played a central role in establishing photography as a fine art and in introducing European modernism to the United States. Through his journal Camera Work and galleries including 291, he championed Pictorialist and later straight photography while exhibiting Picasso, Matisse, and Brancusi.

His own photographic series, including Equivalents — cloud studies intended as pure abstractions of emotion — argued that a photograph could function as an artwork independent of its subject. He was married to painter Georgia O'Keeffe, whom he extensively photographed and promoted.