“What Next?” Camera Work and 291 Magazine

Presented in the Museum Learning Center, “What Next?” Camera Work and 291 Magazine features photogravures from the deluxe photography journal Camera Work, as well as avant-garde drawings and visual poems published in 291 magazine. Alfred Stieglitz launched Camera Work (1903–1917) to promote photography as a fine art, and during the course of its run, the photographs published in the journal shifted in style from soft-focused pictorialism to a more hard-edged modernist approach. 291 magazine (1915–1916) was created by artists and writers—Marius de Zayas, Agnes Ernst Meyer, and Paul Haviland—and funders included Stieglitz. With its daring design and innovative use of typography, 291 was a forum for international artists to experiment and collaborate. Issues of both groundbreaking publications were donated to the Addison by Georgia O’Keeffe and Elizabeth Davidson in 1953.