Hodge Kirnon
1917
Artist, American, 1864 - 1946
Artwork overview
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Medium
palladium print
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Credit Line
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Dimensions
image: 24 x 19.7 cm (9 7/16 x 7 3/4 in.)
sheet: 25.3 x 20.3 cm (9 15/16 x 8 in.) -
Accession
1949.3.407
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Stieglitz Estate Number
84E
Part of Stieglitz Key Set Online Edition
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Key Set Number
463
Alfred Stieglitz
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Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Georgia O'Keeffe; gift to NGA, 1949.
Associated Names
Exhibition History
1958
Photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, March 16–April 27, 1958
1983
Photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, February 3–May 8, 1983; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June 17–August 14, 1983; The Art Institute of Chicago, October 18, 1983–January 3, 1984
2002
Alfred Stieglitz: Known and Unknown, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, June 2–September 2, 2002; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, October 6, 2002–January 5, 2003
Bibliography
1983
Greenough, Sarah, and Juan Hamilton. Alfred Stieglitz: Photographs and Writings. Washington, 1983: no. 60, pl. 30.
2002
Greenough, Sarah. Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs. Washington, 2002: vol. 1, cat. 463.
Inscriptions
by Georgia O'Keeffe, on mount, lower left, in graphite: Treated by Steichen
by later hand, on mount, lower left verso, in graphite: 84 E
Wikidata ID
Q64034919
Scholarly Remarks and Key Set Data
Hodge Kirnon, an immigrant from Montserrat, was the elevator operator for the building that housed Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery, 291. He contributed to a special issue of Camera Work devoted to the question “What Is 291?” (1914), writing, in part: “I have found in ‘291’ a spirit which fosters liberty, defines no methods, never pretends to know, never condemns, but always encourages those who are daring enough to be intrepid.” After World War I, Kirnon became a leading figure in the New Negro movement in Harlem, where he edited and published The Promoter.
In the mid-1910s, Stieglitz started making portraits of people associated with 291 in the space of the gallery. He usually photographed artists in front of works of art, but he posed other sitters against different backgrounds. Here we see Kirnon from mid-torso up, his head framed, halolike, against a rectangle of light (perhaps a window with a shade). He leans against a doorway and fingers one of his suspender straps. With its mood of introspection and wistfulness, the photograph presents Kirnon as thoughtful and sensitive. But the use of light as a framing device, while formally striking, may also reflect a paternalistic view of Kirnon as “pure” and naive. The portrait was made in June 1917 as Stieglitz was in the process of shuttering 291.
This photograph is part of the Alfred Stieglitz Key Set, the largest, most complete, and most important collection of photographs by Stieglitz in existence. Georgia O’Keeffe gave the Key Set of 1,642 photographs to the National Gallery of Art in 1949 and 1980.