'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be
neither will they become what they might appear to become.'
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The Steerage | Photogravure 1907 |
So wrote Alfred Stieglitz, 24 years after he had taken the photograph – counted as one of the conic moments in both photography and the 20th century. He was not a neutral observer, he was also part of the scene, as he had wandered down from the first-class deck to ‘survey the jumbled scene’ of passengers in the steerage, or economy class, section, which contrasted sharply with ‘the mob called the rich’ that he had left behind.
He also described what appealed to him aesthetically in the scene:
‘The scene fascinated me: A round straw hat; the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right; the white drawbridge, its railings made of chain; white suspenders crossed on the back of a man below; circular iron machinery; a mast that cut into the sky, completing a triangle. I stood spellbound for a while. I saw shapes related to one another -- a picture of shapes, and underlying it, a new vision that held me...’
One of the most influential photographers of the 20th Century, Stieglitz argued that photography should be taken as seriously as an art form. His work helped to change the way many viewed photography while his galleries in New York featured many of the best photographers of the day.
This image, simply called ‘The Steerage’, not only encapsulates what he called ‘straight’ photography – offering a truthful take on the world – but also tries to give us a more complex understanding by conveying abstraction through shapes and their relationships to one another.
