The Hand of Man

Throughout his adult life, Stieglitz worked tirelessly to promote photography as a serious art form: in the photographic journals he published, in the galleries he curated and in the photographs he created that challenged widely-held beliefs about beauty and subject matter. The Hand of Man is one of these photographs. By showing the beauty to be found in a gritty, urban landscape, Stieglitz forever altered the popular notion that only lush, lovely landscapes qualified as art. With The Hand of Man, Stieglitz came another step closer to dispelling the established view of the time that photography was little more than gadgetry and proved that, in the hands of an artist, a camera was as worthy a tool as a paintbrush.