Georgia O'Keeffe by Alfred Steiglitz

Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe were one of the great love stories in the art world. O'Keeffe would leave for weeks, even months at a time to focus on painting and in that time, Stieglitz would focus on his work. O'Keeffe provided Stieglitz with the muse he'd always sought and the result was a large body of photographs of her, including this portrait. Many years after this photo was taken, O'Keeffe would comment, "Stieglitz photographed me first at his gallery "291" in the spring of 1917. … My hands had always been admired since I was a little girl, but I never thought much about it. He wanted head and hands and arms on a pillow”in many different positions. I was asked to move my hands in many different ways—also my head—and I had to turn this way and that.  Stieglitz had a very sharp eye for what he wanted to say with the camera. When I look over the photographs Stieglitz took of me some of them more than sixty years ago”I wonder who that person is. It is as if in my one life I have lived many lives.  His idea of a portrait was not just one picture. His dream was to start with a child at birth and photograph that child in all of its activities as it grew to be a person and on throughout its adult life. As a portrait it would be a photographic diary."