Early Edward Weston

[jnantz]

i have been lucky enough to see a garo print in the flesh.
it was at a shop whose owner's father was good friends with garo.
it was a landscape at jamaica pond in boston, and a gum over platinum, it was beautiful ....

[paulr]

I was clearly referring to the photography he showed after Strand, not the modern art. You'll notice that Stieglitz never gave Edward Weston a show.
Incidentally, if you read about them, you'll discover that those seminal works of modern art were selected by STEICHEN and sent to Stieglitz from Europe -- who had nothihng to do with it except hanging them in his gallery (which was in Steichen's old studio).
Steichen and Stieglitz severed their friendship about WW1. Stieglitz was pro-German, Steichen pro-France.

I'm going to revisit my Stieglitz books ... my hunch is that this is a huge simplification; that Stieglitz made several trips to Europe over the years for purposes of digesting contemporary art, and that Steichen was more a scout than a source of curatorial vision.

Steichen was a member of the Steiglitz crowd that never, himself, made the leap to modernism.

It's true that Stieglitz didn't think much of Weston's work. It's also true that by the time Weston made the trip and showed it to him, Stieglitz had grown resentful of his role as Supreme Tastmaker. He was often cranky and dismissive, and probably made any number of bad decisions over the years. But I think he made enough important good ones to justify his reputation as a great curator and visionary.