Georgia O'Keeffe

When Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe met, in 1915, he was a celebrated photographer who promoted modern art through his publications and galleries and she, 23 years his junior, was just beginning to gain recognition as a painter. A few years later they entered into a passionate affair, and they eventually married in 1924. Stieglitz felt revitalized by the relationship, and in a growing fascination with seriality he produced over 300 photographs of O’Keeffe to form a kind of composite portrait: in front of her paintings, in isolated fragments, and in the intimate poses of a paramour, as seen here. In 1921 Stieglitz exhibited a print of this image at the Anderson Galleries in New York, in a one-person show that included some 40 portraits of O’Keeffe. Years later, when O’Keeffe looked back at the pictures, she remarked, “It is as if in my one life I have lived many lives.”

For more on the Alfred Stieglitz collection at the Art Institute, along with in-depth object information, please visit the website: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection.