Provenance

Georgia O'Keeffe; gift to NGA, 1949.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2014

Bibliography

2002

Inscriptions

by Alfred Stieglitz, on mount, top center verso, in graphite: Hodge

Wikidata ID

Q64034920

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 stares directly into the camera while holding a copy of Camera Work, the journal to which he had contributed three years earlier. 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.