The Hand of Man

This photograph taken from the back of a moving train was published in the first issue of Camera Work, in January 1903. A note on the pictures in that issue explained the image not as a contrast between man and machine, but as a link between art and the everyday: “The Hand of Man . . . is an attempt to treat pictorially a subject which enters so much into our daily lives that we are apt to lose sight of the pictorial possibilities of the commonplace.”

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.