Alfred Stieglitz - The Odyssey of Collecting: Photographs from Joy of Giving Something Foundation New York Tuesday, October 3, 2017 | Phillips

The Odyssey of Collecting: Photographs from Joy...

New York 3 October 2017

  • Provenance

    Sotheby's, New York, 5 October 1994, lot 9

  • Literature

    Greenough, Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set (Volume One), no. 93
    Variant croppings:
    Camera Work, Number 36, October 1911, p. 61
    Bry, Alfred Stieglitz: Photographer, pl. 2
    Daniel, Stieglitz Steichen Strand, pls. 4-5
    Homer, Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo Secession, p. 18
    Norman, Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer, pl. IV
    Whelan, Alfred Stieglitz: Photography, Georgia O'Keeffe, and the Rise of the Avant-Garde in America, n.p.

  • Catalogue Essay

    Alfred Stieglitz experimented broadly with photographic techniques and printing methods in his early career. While this technical experimentation is rarely emphasized in studies of his work, Stieglitz nonetheless expanded the capabilities of the processes available to photographers at the turn of the century. His perfection of the photogravure, platinum, and palladium processes are generally known, but he was equally enthusiastic about the lantern slide and ultimately created a series of finely-realized slides that met his high standards for tonal precision and detail.

    A lantern slide is a transparency on glass designed to be viewed with a projector, popularly known as a “magic lantern” or, simply, a “lantern.” Projected onto a wall or screen, a properly made lantern slide produced a luminous image much larger than could be attained through the printing methods of the day. Stieglitz’s belief in the process as a vehicle for his images was such that he made slides of many of his best photographs and included them in several prominent exhibitions. A lantern slide of this image was projected at the Royal Photographic Society in London in 1897.

    While better known today as The Terminal, Stieglitz first exhibited this image as The Terminus. The image remained an important one for Stieglitz, and he returned to it repeatedly, exhibiting it as a carbon print, small and large-format photogravures, and, in the 1920s, a gelatin silver print. In Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set, Sarah Greenough locates only one other lantern slide of this image, at the George Eastman Museum, Rochester.

78

Alfred Stieglitz

The Terminus

1893
Gelatin dry-plate lantern slide.
2 1/8 x 2 5/8 in. (5.4 x 6.7 cm)
Overall 3 1/8 x 3 1/4 in. (7.9 x 8.3 cm)
Titled, numbered '23' in ink and printed credit on the paper mat; numerical and 'The Camera Club, N.Y.' paper labels affixed to the glass housing.

Estimate
$15,000 - 25,000 

Sold for $25,000

Contact Specialist
Rachel Peart
Specialist
+1 212 940 1246

Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Deputy Chairman, Americas

General Enquiries:
+1 212 940 1245

The Odyssey of Collecting: Photographs from Joy of Giving Something Foundation

New York 3 October 2017