The Steerage

Alfred Stieglitz's Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, founded with Edward Steichen in 1905 and better known as 291, for its Fifth Avenue location, was the first in the United States to show the work of European modernist artists including Matisse, Cezanne, and Picasso, predating the famous Armory show of 1913 by five years. Stieglitz also championed photography as a fine art-his own as well as that of others-long before it gained such recognition in America. His iconic photograph "The Steerage" provoked extensive discussion, both for its striking composition and for the questions its class-oriented subject matter raises.
Born in Hoboken, New Jersey to German Jewish immigrant parents, Stieglitz and his family moved to Berlin in 1881, as his father believed Germany would provide a better education for his children. Stieglitz, who was in his second year at City College in New York City, enrolled in the mechanical engineering program in Berlin, where he also began to experiment with photography, becoming adept at its technical processes. Returning to New York in 1890, Stieglitz began photographing his changing urban environment, focusing on the people, building, and industry that had yet to be accepted as subjects of artistic photography. In the United States in the late nineteenth century, suitable subject matter included landscapes and people photographed in a romantic, impressionistic style. In his early work, Stieglitz favored the blurred, impressionistic style of pictorialist photography but advocated modern, urban subject matter.
Stieglitz formed the Camera Club of New York in 1896 and, in 1902, founded the Photo-Secession, a group of pictorialist photographers modeled on the English Linked Ring and European Secessionist groups. While his own style changed from pictorial to straight photography, he continued to support and exhibit modern pictorialist photographers. In 1903, he inaugurated the journal "Camera Work," which published technical articles, essays on aesthetics, literature, criticism, and theories of modern art. Through 291 and "Camera Work," Stieglitz supported the work of American modernists such as Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Elie Nadelman, Max Weber, Paul Strand, Charles Demuth, and Georgia O'Keeffe, whom he eventually married.
“The Steerage” epitomizes Stieglitz’s urban, straight style of photography, which emphasized clarity of detail and photography’s ability to capture reality. Taken on an ocean liner bound for Europe, the photograph is evenly divided between the upper and lower decks of the ship’s bow, separated by the sharp diagonal of the suspended walkway. Both levels are crowded with steerage-class passengers, who were intermittently allowed access above deck for fresh air. Unlike the people depicted in his photograph, Stieglitz traveled first-class with his first wife, Emmeline, and their eight-year-old daughter, Katherine. Their opulent quarters, shared with other well-off leisure travelers, were spacious and grand, while lower-class immigrants endured the cramped and miserable conditions of the steerage below. The question remains as to whether the immigrants here are being forcibly returned to Europe by the United States government-as many were for reasons of disease, “poor moral health,” or lack of financial support in the States-or if they are returning of their own accord, disillusioned with the country they had believed would change their fate.
Furthermore, does Stieglitz’s photograph express class consciousness or is it simply an observation of his surroundings, focusing as much on the shapes formed by the picture’s elements as much as its subject? Although Stieglitz stated that he felt displeasure with the first-class nouveaux riches and an affinity with those in steerage, by this point his family was well established in the States and he was entrenched in the privileges of his stature. This photograph typifies Stieglitz’s dual interests in urban modernity and formal harmony, in this case played out through the saga of American immigration.