Feb 19, 2015 - Sale 2374

Sale 2374 - Lot 10

Price Realized: $ 7,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
STIEGLITZ, ALFRED (1864-1946)
"The Steerage," from Camera Work, Number 36. Photogravure on Japan tissue, 7 1/2x6 inches (19.1x 15.2 cm.), on the original mount. 1907; printed 1911

Additional Details

This formally constructed image depicts families returning to Europe (not disembarking), and is considered an icon of 20th-century photography. It was an image that intrigued the Cubist master Picasso, who apparently referred to it as "two images, not one."

Widely reproduced, it appears in the following publications:

Icons of Photography, The 20th Century, p. 15.

On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography, pl. 186.

20th Century Photography, Museum Ludwig Cologne, p. 673.

Gruber and Gruberg: The Imaginary Photomuseum, pl. 61.