Dorothy Norman | |
|---|---|
 Dorothy Norman (Alfred Stieglitz, 1932) | |
| Born | Dorothy Stecker March 28, 1905 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Died | April 12, 1997 (aged 92) East Hampton, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Photography, writing |
| Spouse | Edward A. Norman (m. 1925–1951) |
Dorothy Norman (née Stecker; 28 March 1905 – 12 April 1997) was an American photographer, writer, editor, arts patron and advocate for social change.
Born Dorothy Stecker [1] in Philadelphia to a prominent Jewish family, she was educated in arts and languages from her youth. [2] In 1925, she married Edward A. Norman, the son of an early Sears & Roebuck entrepreneur. They lived in New York City, where Mrs. Norman immersed herself in social-activism groups: as a researcher for the American Civil Liberties Union; with Planned Parenthood, the National Urban League, and the Group Theatre. In the meantime, they had two children together, Andrew and Nancy.
She attended Smith College, then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, remaining there from 1922 until her 1925 marriage.
Her life was motivated by "a desire to advance both art and action". She actively cultivated an interest in people who were involved with either the artistic arena or efforts at increasing social equity. [1] In this role, she became acquainted with photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who was already a towering influence in the nascent field of art photography when they met in 1927. Although both were married at that time — she to Norman and he to modern artist Georgia O'Keeffe — they entered into a long-term affair after Stieglitz began mentoring her. [3] Their relationship continued until his death in 1946. Her marriage to Edward Norman ended in divorce in 1951.
Norman never worked as a professional photographer; instead, she captured images of friends, loved ones and prominent figures in the arts and in politics. People she photographed included Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Thomas Mann (with his wife Katia, or Katy), John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Bernard Berenson, Albert Einstein, Theodore Dreiser, Elia Kazan, Lewis Mumford and Sherwood Anderson.
She also photographed special sites, trees, harbors, churches and buildings. She detailed the interior of An American Place, Stieglitz's last gallery, in photographs included in America and Alfred Stieglitz, A Collective Portrait, published in 1934. [4] She created an extended portrait study of Stieglitz [5] (he returned the favour by creating a similar study of Norman). [6]
Norman's photographic work is noted for its clarity of vision, masterful blend of light and shading, and professional-quality printing techniques. [7]
During the 1930s and 1940s, Norman was active in various liberal causes, particularly civil rights, education, and independence for India; she was also a Zionist. In order to draw attention to these causes, such as racial discrimination in America, Supreme Court decisions, and Nazi medical atrocities, she wrote different publications. She was a founding member of New York City's Liberal Party and a member of the Americans for Democratic Action, and served on the boards of both the New York Urban League and the National Urban League.
Norman was a productive author. She wrote a weekly column for the New York Post (1942-1949) and for ten years (1938-1948) edited and published the literary and social activist journal Twice a Year , whose contributors included Richard Wright, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Bertolt Brecht. [8] Norman chose provocative aphorisms by contemporary and historical writers, male and female, and from various cultures, to accompany the thematic groups of photographs in sections of MoMA's world-touring exhibition The Family of Man for its curator Edward Steichen, [9] a long-term associate of Alfred Stieglitz.
She wrote or edited numerous books, including The Selected Writings of John Marin (1949); Nehru: The First Sixty Years (1965), a two-volume collection of the Indian leader's writings; Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer (1970), the first full-length biography of the American modernist; and Indira Gandhi: Letters to an American Friend (1985). Her memoir, Encounters, was published in 1987. She also wrote the book The Spirit of India.
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century, where he introduced many avant-garde European artists to the U.S. He was married to painter Georgia O'Keeffe.
Edward Jean Steichen was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography.
291 is the commonly known name for an internationally famous art gallery that was located in Midtown Manhattan at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City from 1905 to 1917. Originally called the "Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession", the gallery was established and managed by photographer Alfred Stieglitz.
Gertrude Käsebier was an American photographer. She was known for her images of motherhood, her portraits of Native Americans, and her promotion of photography as a career for women.
Beaumont Newhall was an American curator, art historian, writer, photographer, and the second director of the George Eastman Museum. His book The History of Photography remains one of the most significant accounts in the field and has become a classic photographic history textbook. Newhall was the recipient of numerous awards and accolades for his accomplishments in the study of photo history.
Camera Work was a quarterly photographic journal published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917. It presented high-quality photogravures by some of the most important photographers in the world, with the goal to establish photography as a fine art. It has been called "consummately intellectual", "by far the most beautiful of all photographic magazines", and "a portrait of an age [in which] the artistic sensibility of the nineteenth century was transformed into the artistic awareness of the present day."
Emmy Eugenie Andriesse was a Dutch photographer best known for her work with the Underground Camera group during World War II.
Alice Boughton was an early 20th-century American photographer known for her photographs of many literary and theatrical figures of her time. She was a Fellow of Alfred Stieglitz's Photo-Secession, a circle of photographers whose artistic efforts succeeded in raising photography to a fine art form.
Mary Devens was an American photographer who was considered one of the ten most prominent pictorial photographers of the early 20th century. She was listed as a founding member of Alfred Stieglitz’s famed Photo-Secession.
Otto Hagel (1909–1973) was a German-born American photographer and filmmaker. He and his wife Hansel Mieth were part of the school of socially conscious documentary photo-journalists that included Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham, Peter Stackpole and Robert Capa. In the early 1930s, Hagel was a member of the San Francisco Film and Photo League.
Leon Levinstein (1910–1988) was an American street photographer best known for his work documenting everyday street life in New York City from the 1950s through the 1980s. In 1975 Levinstein was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
May Mirin (1900-1997) was an American photographer who documented life in Mexico.
Margery Lewis (Smith) was an American photographer active from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Carmel Vitullo is an American street photographer whose imagery of Rhode Island have been acquired for a number of collections.
William Vandivert was an American photographer, co-founder in 1947 of the agency Magnum Photos.
Eiju Otaki was a Japanese photographer and photojournalist active in the 1950s.
Ewing Krainin was an American magazine, advertising and travel photographer active 1940s-1970s.
Gottfried "Jeff" Rainer was an Austrian photojournalist active from the 1950s to the 1970s.
John Bertolino was an American photojournalist who photographed in Italy and the United States and was active in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Flatiron is a colored photograph made by Luxembourgish American photographer Edward Steichen. The photograph depicts the recently erected Flatiron Building in New York, taking inspiration from fellow photographers like Alfred Stieglitz, who had just photographed the building a year prior. The original negative was made in 1904 and spawned three platinum-gum exhibition prints in brown (1905), blue-green (1909), and yellow-green-black.
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