Simultanious Photographic and Poetic Evolution Analyzed using Alfred Stieglitz Camera Work

Posted on February 28, 2014 by Beau

For my DH final project I plan on analyzing Alfred Stieglitz photographic journal titled Camera Work, which was published from 1903-1917. In my analysis I want to find some way to compare the evolving art of photography, as Stieglitz saw it, with the changing trends of modern poetry. Form and content of photos started to become more artistic and less objective. Boundaries of traditional photography were surpassed and new techniques that placed emphasis on the style of the content rather than the content itself grew out of the modern art movement. This mirrors, in several ways, the evolution of modern poetry taking place simultaneously. I haven’t been able to review enough of Camera Work yet, but I would like to compare the stylistic aspects of the photos and the poems that are artistically similar (like how we compare paintings with poems in class). This would likely be in the form of a slide show/movie of some kind where I would talk about a poem/poet-photo/photographer relating one form to the other.

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2 Responses to Simultanious Photographic and Poetic Evolution Analyzed using Alfred Stieglitz Camera Work

  1. Prof VZ says:
    March 16, 2014 at 10:26 pm

    I think this is a great start. I know the images from the journal are available online, though I don’t think the journal itself is available online in digitized form. That’s too bad, as it would allow you to use some of the essays from Camera Work to engage the contemporary conversation about photography and poetry as two mutually informing artworks. I know there has been plenty of research on this in addition to those contemporary conversations, though. A good place to begin would be a book called “Cubism, Stieglizt, and the Early Poetry of William Carlos Williams.” Let the research begin!

    I like the idea, in terms of presentation, of holding a poem or an image from a poem next to one of the CW images. The connection doesn’t have to be actual; it could be more associative. You would be responsible, then, for articulating the connections you see between the work in both mediums.

  2. Prof VZ says:
    March 25, 2014 at 10:28 pm

    You’re missing your bibliography here, as well as more detail on how this will all be presented. Please keep revising your post as you clarify / refine the project.

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