TOLEDO, OH.- A rare set of every edition of Camera Work, the seminal journal that helped establish photography as fine art, has been added to the Toledo Museum of Art collection.

The periodical was edited from 1903 to 1917 by Alfred Stieglitz, an artist who worked tirelessly within the then-emerging medium of photography. It featured high-quality photogravures on Japanese rice paper by some of the most talented photographers of the day, including David Octavius Hill, Gertrude Käsebier, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand and Clarence White.

“It’s rare to find one complete issue that hasn’t been cut up or altered,” said Thomas Loeffler, the recently retired assistant curator of works on paper. “To have a complete set of the magazine’s entire run – 50 issues altogether – is really quite a coup.”

Camera Work has been added to the Toledo Museum of Art’s collection thanks to The Apollo Society, a group of donors that generously supports TMA through an annual art acquisition. Founded in 1986, the group has since contributed more than $5 million to acquire some 46 works of art for the Museum.

“We’re delighted to add this impressive work to the Museum’s collection” said Director Brian Kennedy. “The Apollo Society’s high standard for collecting has led to many major acquisitions over the 29 years of its inspiring leadership.”

Though it never had a circulation of more than 1,000, Camera Work was nonetheless highly influential in bringing what was previously seen as a purely technical process into the realm of gallery- and museum-worthy art. It has been called “consummately intellectual” by Andrew Roth, author of “The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century.” Jonathan Green, author of “Camera Work: A Critical Anthology,” said the magazine was "a portrait of an age [in which] the artistic sensibility of the nineteenth century was transformed into the artistic awareness of the present day.”

“It was a very niche, subscription-based publication,” Loeffler said. “But it can be credited with helping prove that photography was indeed capable of creating fine art.”

Camera Work will be stored among the Museum’s rare book collection until it is put on view later this year.

The Artist
Born in 1864 in Hoboken, New Jersey, Alfred Stieglitz was educated in his father’s native Germany. When he returned to the United States in 1890, he embarked on what would become a decades-long devotion to photography and art, writing articles on the subject and opening a gallery in New York City. An artist in his own right, he formed the Photo-Secession, a group who rebelled against the contemporary view of the photographer as technician rather than craftsman. In 1924, Stieglitz married the painter Georgia O’Keefe, who was among his favorite pictorial subjects.