When photography became art
Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) is credited with getting photography accepted as an art form — reason enough for him to be the first subject in this year’s series of In-Sight Evenings at the Harvard Art Museums. The ticketed, after-hours events, complete with receptions before and afterward, are billed as a way to look “deeper and differently” at a single artist or work. Deborah Martin Kao, who spoke to a near-capacity crowd in the Sackler Museum auditorium, acknowledged right away that her subject is “an artist who is bigger than life.” The first image in her slide show was of an intense, steely-eyed Stieglitz in 1909, a “galvanic portrait,” she said, taken “at the height of his powers.” Kao, who is Harvard’s Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, also showed “The Steerage” (1907), “one of the iconic images of 20th century art,” she said. The mesmerizing frame includes a slanting funnel, bisecting gangplank, and...