The Steerage

Though it was captured in the blink of an eye, The Steerage is one of the most enduring artworks in the history of photography and the seminal work of artist Alfred Stieglitz’s famed career. Contrary to myth, it is not a document of immigrants arriving in the United States nor disillusioned Europeans returning home. For Stieglitz, the picture was a study of form and space: “A round straw hat; the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right; the white drawbridge. I saw shapes related to one another—a picture of shapes, and underlying it, a new vision that held me.” The Steerage represented a new course for his photography, not as a mimic of painting but as a complete and unique art form.