Photo-Secession

Photo-Secession, the first influential group of American photographers that worked to have photography accepted as a fine art. Led by Alfred Stieglitz, the group also included Edward Steichen, Clarence H. White, Gertrude Käsebier, and Alvin Langdon Coburn. These photographers broke away from the Camera Club of New York in 1902 and pursued Pictorialism, or techniques of manipulating negatives and prints so as to approximate the effects of drawings, etchings, and oil paintings. The Photo-Secession was inspired by art movements in Europe, such as the Linked Ring, that had similar goals.

The Photo-Secession actively promoted its ideas. Stieglitz edited and published the important quarterly Camera Work and opened the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession (also known as “291,” the gallery’s address on Fifth Avenue), providing a place for the members to exhibit their work. In 1910 the Photo-Secession sponsored an international show of more than 500 photographs by its members or by photographers whose aims were similar to its own. The show, occupying more than half of the exhibition space at the Albright Art Gallery (now the Albright-Knox Gallery) in Buffalo, New York, was a sensation and significantly advanced the acceptance of photography as an art form.

By 1910, however, the members of the Photo-Secession had become divided. Some continued to manipulate their negatives and prints to achieve nonphotographic effects, while others came to feel that such manipulation destroyed tone and texture and was inappropriate to photography. Torn by this division, the group soon dissolved.