The latest exhibit at the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery, "100 Years of Camera Work" shows the vision of photographer Alfred Stieglitz -- who published the quarterly journal Camera Work for nearly two decades in the early 20th century - and significant photography by Gertrude Käsebier, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, George Seeley, Eva Watson-Schütze, and Alvin Langdon Coburn. Other modernist artists whose work appears in the journal include Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, and Francis Picabia.

"100 Years of Camera Work celebrates the impact that the journal had by exhibiting UMBC's entire holding in a very rare public display of an exceedingly rare publication. In recognition of the powerful influence that Camera Work had upon the development of Modernism in photography, 20th century art photographs made following 1917 have been selected from UMBC's Photography Collections to complement the exhibition of Camera Work. Among the works to be included in the exhibition are many by modernists such as UMBC visual arts professor Jaromir Stephany, as well as Ralph Gibson, David Plowden, Minor White, Judy Dater, Olivia Parker, Barbara Crane, Barbara Young, and Lotte Jacobi.

Camera Work captured images of life, of people, and put them in a medium that people all over the world could look at and enjoy. Breaking from the past and bringing a new avant-garde artistic style to the still somewhat traditional and formalist genre of photography was one of the purposes of this classic magazine.

"What Stieglitz wanted to do was show that photography wasn't just commerce, it was art," says Tom Beck, UMBC's chief curator. "These photographers made art for art's sake." Pulling images from UMBC's Special Collections, Beck created a conglomeration of photographs from the early 20th century that tried to evoke similar sentiments.

The idea of "art for art's sake" is captured in one of the first photographs from the early years of Camera Work on display, Gertrude Kasebier's Ms. N. In the most technical of definitions, this is a portrait; the woman is sitting for her picture to be taken. But that is where any resemblance between a typical portrait and this photograph stops. The woman is leaning towards you, her dark hair is falling about her shoulders, her eyes are begging you to look at her. There is an innocence and an unconscious sensuality coexisting within this woman, battling to see who the victor will be. She looks at you and you must stare back at her. She has a secret in her eye that she is trying to share with you.

This is the photography that exemplifies the beginning years, daring to try something different, make a creative statement when before only a replication of someone else's reality would be imprinted on the paper. As time passed, Camera Work expanded from photography into illustrations of sculpture, drawings, and paintings. It was during the New Art years of the magazine from 1910-1914 that European artists Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso were brought to mainstream America. Camera Work also included articles about modernism and its impact on art. Among the famous writers published in the journal were include Charles H. Caffin, George Bernard Shaw, Sadakichi Hartman, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, and Mabel Dodge Luhan.

As chaos in the form of World War I inched its way closer to the America, the frequency of the magazine's publication lessened and subscriptions also decreased. Another reason for this was the direction the magazine was taking - the photography was no longer the avant-garde form that had captured people's eye. Some of the last pictures in the exhibit are of Wall Street in the late 1910s, of people walking on the street, their sharp-angled shadows solitary and long. There is a tangible loneliness and detachment from others that is connected with these images.

--Jennifer Leigh Gibson

Library Gallery hours: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, 12 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 12 to 8 p.m.; and Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m. The gallery is closed Sundays and major holidays. For more information call (410) 455-2270.

Photos, from top:
Alfred Stieglitz, In the New York Central Yards, 1903, copyprint

Alvin Langdon Coburn, The Bridge-Sunlight, 1906, photogravure

Alvin Langdon Coburn, On the Embankment, 1909, photogravure

All photos courtesy of the UMBC Photography Collections.