Sunday, July 13, 2008

Have you seen the "Key Set" ?

Georgia O'Keeffe gave a large collection of Alfred Stieglitz's work to the National Gallery and Sara Greenough has assembled the photographs into a two volume set known as "The Key Set".
I bought a copy when it was published in 2002 and from time to time have gone through the first volume.
I've finally gotten around to going through the second volume.
Stieglitz was a World Class champion of photography and a World Class photographer himself. ( I don't want to get to far out of line with the Academy )
I am surprised by how many of his prints where quite MUDDY. I know, times and tools have changed but still.
What I come away with is a strong desire to make a date at the MFA H print room to look at all 27 ( at last count ) of their Stieglitz prints and perhaps most important, get to the darkroom and make some of my own slightly less muddy prints.

Here's a link to the Eastman press release that mentions the collection.
Eastman sponsored the exhibition and catalogue. It's well worth a look if you can find a copy. My guess is the MFA H library has one.
http://www.nga.gov/press/exh/173/statement.pdf

1 comment:

Robert Langham said...

Do it. In fact, invite me along and let's BOTH do it. I would love to see all the prints and post about his darkroom work or lack of. Maybe you ought to do MFAH and I could do Amon Carter. Just thinking out loud.