Stieglitz: Rapaz veneciano

Alfred STIEGLITZ
Venetian Boy
1887
It gradually dawned on me that something must be wrong with the art of painting as practiced at that time. With my camera I could procure the same results as those attained by painters – in black and white for the time being, perhaps in color later on. I could express the same moods. Artists who saw my early photographs began to tell me that they envied me; that they felt my photographs were superior to their paintings, but that, unfortunately, photography was not an art. I could not understand why the artists should envy me for my work, yet, in the same breath, decry it because it was machine-made – their 'art' painting, because hand-made, being considered necessarily superior. Then and there I started my fight – or rather my conscious struggle for the recognition of photography as a new medium of expression, to be respected in its own right, on the same basis as any other art form. Then and there I decided to devote my life to finding out what people really mean when they say one thing and feel another, say one thing and do another.

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Pouco a pouco decateime de que algo debía ir mal na pintura daquela época. Coa miña camara podía encontrar os mesmos resultados que os obtidos polos pintores - en branco e negro no momento presente, tal vez en color máis tarde. Podía expresar os mesmos estados de ánimo. Artistas que vían as miñas primeiras fotografías comezaban a dicirme que me envexaban; que sentían que as miñas fotografías eran superiores que as súas pinturas, mais que, por desgraza, a fotografía non era unha arte. Non podía entender como os artistas podían sentir envexa polo meu traballo e, ao mesmo tempo, condealo por estar feito cunha maquina - consideraban como necesariamente mellor a súa "arte" da pintura por estar feita a mao. Foi entón cando comecei a miña luita - ou mellor dito o meu combate consciente polo recoñecemento da fotografía como un novo medio de expresión, por ser respeitada por dereito propio, ao mesmo nivel que calquer outra forma de arte. A partir de entón decidín dedicar a miña vida a descobrir o que a xente ten en mente realmente cando di unha cousa e sinte outra, di algo e fai o contrario.

Stieglitz a finais da década de 1880.