The Hand of Man
1902
- Medium
- Photogravure
- Dimensions
- 24.1 × 31.8 cm
- Status
- In Museum Collection
- Collect24 Art ID
- C24-636663
A locomotive engine steams toward the camera on its barely visible tracks, wearing a billowing black cloud of smoke like a plumed hat. The criss-crossing lines of tracks beside it snake off toward the horizon, and the telephone poles at the left appear to be making the same march. Alfred Stieglitz's composition is a treatise on the importance of the machine in the modern Industrial Age. The title of the photograph, *The Hand of Man* , sets up a comparison between the machine that is depicted and the human artistic impulse that created the image. Stieglitz reproduced this photograph in the January 1903 issue of *Camera Work* , a journal that he both founded and edited. In the early 1930s he returned to the image and printed additional photographs.
Provenance
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Registry history
- 1902 — Recorded in the collection of J. Paul Getty Museum — photographs
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