Few individuals have exerted as strong an influence on 20th-century American art and culture as the photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1864 during the Civil War, Stieglitz began to photograph while a student in Berlin in the 1880s and studied photographic technology with chemist Hermann Wilhelm Vogel.

He returned to the United States in 1890 and began his campaign to recognize photography as an art form, publishing numerous articles and editing the periodicals Camera Notes (1897–1902) and Camera Work (1903–1917). In 1902, Stieglitz formed the Photo-Secession, an organization of photographers committed to establishing the artistic merit of photography.

Through his New York galleries—the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession at 291 Fifth Avenue, which he directed from 1905 to 1917; The Intimate Gallery, 1925–1929; and An American Place, 1929–1946, Stieglitz introduced modern European art to this country, organizing the first American exhibitions for Picasso, Matisse, Braque, and Cézanne. He also championed work by Americn modernists including his wife, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Charles Demuth.

Photography was always of central importance to Stieglitz, who oresaw that it would revolutionize all aspects of the way we learn and communicate and that it would profoundly alter all of the arts. He died in New York City.