Georgia O'Keeffe 1918

Alfred Stieglitz captured this intimate portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe through the lens of his large format camera, using a platinum printing process. Platinum prints like this one were prized for their soft, continuous tones and exceptional detail. Stieglitz, an early advocate for photography as fine art, would have meticulously controlled every aspect of the printing process himself in his darkroom. Coating the paper with light-sensitive emulsion, carefully exposing the image through the negative, and then developing the print to bring out the luminous, almost ethereal quality we see here. Photography in Stieglitz’s hands was more than just pointing and shooting. It was a labor-intensive act of crafting an image, coaxing tones and textures out of metallic salts and paper. By elevating photography to the level of a handmade craft, Stieglitz challenged the established hierarchy of the art world, blurring the lines between mechanical reproduction and artistic creation. He wanted to suggest that the hand, eye, and mind of the artist were inseparable.