MO'S: The Godfather of Pure Photography

Stieglitz's contribution to photography is undoubtedly of incommensurable value.
For sure he has been the godfather of photography as an independent form of art, indeed he had always put himself in the first line to protect photography and affirm it as a proper media, no more a slave for other forms of art but a valid and important way to express the artist.
This Prophet of modernism had european roots and it is from Europe that he toke the strength and the idea for his photo-secession.
This movement gives straight life to all american art, becoming soon the starting point for many young artists who wanted to face new subjects, techniques and values.
Elitist, young, daring he pushed art against new barriers gives to the puppet-critics something new to talk about and say bad about: he gives space for european artist in the new continent, the 291 Galleries on the fifth Avenue. It becomes in a few months the place where to be if interested in avant-guardes.
Photography not only becomes a separate recognized media put becomes also a place where all the other visual arts can confront themselves. The next big step is the innovative magazine "Camera Work" where he's the editor.
From here he reins the ambient of modernism in America; here the most recognized and genius artists are published and presented to the big public.
The alternative movement he directs masterly becomes quickly the most interesting and followed art in USA, giving fresh air from manierism and accademism. The works are for the first time exhibited without frame and glass, to give the viewer a more free and inner vision of the art, to create a real link between the artist and the observer.
The only sin he committed was, as every single revolutionary, he became a ruler himself: he dictates precise limits for modernism, giving a place where the post-modernism can start to rise.
He becomes reference point for a lot of young students looking for a new shove.
He free photography from victorian pictorialism finding its place in the city, in a special environment where painting was too slow to stay at the same level, and defines "pure photography": technique and quality are the soul of it, and the media itself becomes also subject.