Blind Woman, published in Camera Work, Numbers 49–50

In 1903 Alfred Stieglitz realized a long-held dream: to publish a quarterly journal “devoted to the furtherance of modern photography.” With a cover design by Edward Steichen and photogravures supervised and tipped in by Stieglitz himself, Camera Work was sumptuous by any standard, conjuring on its pages an evocative visual world whose reach broadened to include avant-garde art by Cézanne, Picasso, and Rodin. After seeing Paul Strand’s bold new photographs in 1916, Stieglitz decided to devote the final issue of the magazine to showcasing them. The impact on younger photographers was profound. Walker Evans recalled “coming across Paul Strand’s Blind Woman… in the New York Public Library file of Camera Work… and I remember going out of there over-stimulated: That’s the stuff, that’s the thing to do.”