I was going to give myself the day off today, chilling out with some non-photography related pursuits. A reward for spending the day in my studio yesterday, finishing off the next self-publishing project I’ve been working on. Hand-binding a stack of books was intense work, and I need a break. So, of course, I stumbled upon something too photographically relevant to avoid, and in the interest of sharing my obsession, I will let you in on this discovery.
Apparently a complete set of the seminal photo journal “Camera Work” is going up for auction. Unless you have about $200K burning a hole in your pocket, this treasure trove of early 20th century art photography will most likely be out of reach. Fear not, the entire collection has been digitized, and is available for downloading (as PDFs) from the good folks at the Modernist Journals Project. Enter this rabbit hole at your own risk. All I know is…there goes my peaceful, non-photographic Saturday.
For some background (thank you Wikipedia):
Camera Work was a quarterly photographic journal published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917. It is known for its many high-quality photogravures by some of the most important photographers in the world and its editorial purpose 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."