Courtesy of Library of Congress

Alfred Stieglitz 1864-1946

Photographer Alfred Stieglitz was instrumental in promoting photography as fine art. Stieglitz's New York art galleries introduced early 20th-century European modernist painters, such as Auguste Rodin and Pablo Picasso, to the United States. He was a founding member of the Photo-Secession, a group of avant-garde artists that promoted photography as a fine art form. Stieglitz's early photographic work was of the pictorialist style, characterized by manipulation techniques used to affect a quality similar to painting or etching. His most famous photographs included "The Terminal," "The Steerage," and portraits of Georgia O'Keeffe, to whom he was married for over two decades before his death.