Literary admirers of Alfred Stieglitz (Southern Illinois UP, 1983)

F. Richard Thomas argues convincingly that Alfred Stieglitz wielded an extraordinary influence on the works of such literary figures as Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson, and William Carlos Williams. The implications of his argument bear not only on the aesthetics, styles, and perceptions of these major American literary figures but on the progress of contemporary photography as well. The four writers Thomas studies here all used aspects of photography in their individual aesthetics and enriched their styles through selective focus on personally significant detail. Each one isolated events to reveal ideas in an impressionistic way. Plot and narration gave way to associative coherence; feelings were conveyed by revealing relationships that existed among objects within the writer’s frame. In their lives as well as in their art, they came to subscribe to a philosophy based on the immediate and the actual.

F. Richard Thomas argues convincingly that Alfred Stieglitz wielded an extraordinary influence on the works of such literary figures as Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson, and William Carlos Williams. The implications of his argument bear not only on the aesthetics, styles, and perceptions of these major American literary figures but on the progress of contemporary photography as well.

 

The four writers Thomas studies here all used aspects of photography in their individual aesthetics and enriched their styles through selective focus on personally significant detail. Each one isolated events to reveal ideas in an impressionistic way. Plot and narration gave way to associative coherence; feelings were conveyed by revealing relationships that existed among objects within the writer’s frame. In their lives as well as in their art, they came to subscribe to a philosophy based on the immediate and the actual.