The Steerage

The Steerage. Alfred Stieglitz. 1907 C.E. Photogravure.

• Elevate photography to the status of fine art by engaging the same dialogues around abstraction that preoccupied European avant-garde painters.
• The Steerage suggests that photographs have more than just a “documentary” voice that speaks to the truth-to-appearance of subjects in a field of space within narrowly defined slice of time. 
• The Steerage calls for a more complex, layered view of photography’s essence that can accommodate and convey abstraction.
•  The Steerage is not only about the “significant form” of shapes, forms and textures, but it also conveys a message about its subjects, immigrants who were rejected at Ellis Island. 
• Stieglitz’s father exemplified the “American dream” that was just beyond the grasp of many of the subjects of The Steerage. He himself was an immigrant. 
• While he was sympathetic to the plight of aspiring new arrivals, Stieglitz was opposed to admitting the uneducated and marginal to the United States of America. 
• Preference to avoid addressing the subject of The Steerage, and to see in this photograph not a political statement, but a place for arguing the value of photography as a fine art. 
• Allowed people to make their own compositions; didn't alter anything; diagonal lines act as framing elements; poorest passengers traveling from the U.S. to Europe; line literally represents social division of society