Camera Work, the 115-year-old publication, is available to be read once again. Alfred Stieglitz published a photographic quarterly called Camera Work over a century ago. Original copies are rare, fragile, and very expensive.
It served as the mouthpiece for the photo-secession movement and introduced pictorialism to the world. Not only are the photogravures beautiful, but the texts, essays, and critiques are also worth reading. Emerging photographers, including Steichen, Robert Demachy, Gertrude Käsebier, Clarence White, and James Craig Annan as well as 19th century photography pioneers Hill & Adamson, and Julia Margaret Cameron grace the pages of Camera Work. The advertisements found on the last few pages of every issue remind the reader of a bygone era of early analog photography.
Very few people or institutions own original copies of Camera Work. Each time they are handled, the risk of damaging a piece of photography’s history is present. The greenish-grey paper used for the cover, and the bindings are extremely friable. It is not readily available to browse its content. The price original copies command makes it impractical for scholars and institutions to buy and to use them as teaching tools or for reference. The goal is to give access of its content to teachers, students, museums, libraries, collectors, and photography history enthusiasts.
Photographer and photogravure admirer Pierre Vreyen has published, for the first time, a high quality, affordable facsimile of all 50 issues. He incorporated high-resolution scans made from each original Camera Work plate and painstakingly reproduced each page as close to the original as possible. One can now read and appreciate every single page published by Alfred Stieglitz in his photographic quarterly. It took two years to digitize, clean, and color correct all 3924 pages and covers. The result of such meticulous work is a faithful facsimile publication. A bonus new issue, number 51, was created and is a table of content of all previous 50 numbers.
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