Getting to Know Alfred and Georgia Through Film – Documentary vs Narrative

Two films about Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keefe provide both historical facts and insights about this enigmatic union. They also are a wonderful way to compare the weaknesses and strengths that narrative and documentary films have about the same subject. 

The Georgia O’Keeffe film, directed by Bob Balaban, focuses on several intimate moments in the lives of O’Keeffe and Stieglitz to reveal the abusive, manipulative and narcissistic behavior of Stieglitz. It was a made for television film that first aired in 2009. However, 89 minutes is not enough time to cover the complexities of her life and the tumultuous relationship with Stieglitz. 

Opening credits over images of her paintings are followed by a breathtaking view of  mountains outside her studio in Abiquiu, New Mexico. There is a first person narration of an older O'Keefe as the camera tracks back into her actual studio, not a set, to reveal that she is painting the scene. Cinema aficionados would not include this shot on their list of best tracking shots, but to O'Keeffe devotees, it borders on the sublime. 

There is a shift to New York, 1916, with a young O’Keeffe going into Stieglitz’s gallery, telling him that she is Georgia O’Keeffe and demanding that he take  down her paintings that he is displaying without her permission. He gives her a speech on how he has put her work next to Picasso and Matisse and she gives in. O’Keeffe feels she is in control when she asserts herself to have Alfred move the bed under the skylight before she moves into the apartment that he uses for a darkroom. She wants to be able to see the stars move around his head when he decides to visit her. She slaps his hands when he starts to undress her blouse while he is photographing her, so she can do it herself. O’Keeffe sees the nude photographs of herself that Alfred has displayed without her permission for a gallery opening of her paintings. She accepts his explanation of why she should embrace his benevolent gesture of promoting her work. His behavior becomes cruel when he openly has an affair with Dorothy Norman the rich benefactor of his gallery. At the Stieglitz family house in Lake George, Georgia has to watch them flirt and openly talk about having sex.  The scene when Georgia sees him photographing and sensually posing Dorothy is very difficult to watch.

He has an intense tirade because she took a commission at Radio City Music Hall without asking him, because he could have negotiated a higher fee. She falls into a deep depression. He brings the most pitifully small bunch of flowers when visits her in the hospital. Lying on the bed in a catatonic state and not able to speak, he immediately starts in about how he has a whole new show planned to showcase her paintings.

Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye, an American Masters Series documentary released in 2001, is a treasure trove of information but you don't watch it for watch it for entertainment. 

Stieglitz’s description in the documentary, in voice over, about how he photographed The Steerage in 1907 reveals an inconsistency in his understanding of why the photograph is considered one of the greatest images in the history of photography. He describes the shapes and angles of the upper level, stairway, booms and masts making triangles, and how he saw shapes related to each other. However, he didn’t learn about these shapes and angles until much later. Max Weber claims he saw the photo in 1910 while he was looking at photos in Stieglitz’s studio. He claims to be the first to tell Stieglitz why the picture was so good. After the photo was first published in Camera Work in 1911, he definitely knew about the aesthetic merits of the photograph. 

On board the SS Kaiser Wilhelm II during a European Grand Tour with his rich wife, daughter and governess, he saw the lower steerage deck scene when he was taking a promenade on the First Class deck. He didn’t have his camera with him and had to run back to his stateroom. He thought the picture depended on the man with the straw hat on the upper deck and the man with the crossed suspenders on the lower deck. He was afraid that the man with the straw hat would move. “If he had the picture wouldn’t exist.” Stieglitz has merged his 1907 memory of the event with his later memories of what people were saying about the picture. Yes, he saw something that would make a good photograph but the man with the straw hat is a very minor component of the image. 

Photogravure of The Steerage, that was taken in 1907, but not published until 1911.   

I have placed colored lines over the main lines and objects in the photograph. 

The  photograph layer has been removed. 

Suprematism  by Kazimir Malevich. 1915. 

Stieglitz's later analysis and writings about The Steerage were influenced  by   discussions about Cubism, Kandinsky's non objective style, and Malevich's works in Suprematism. 

The pain and humiliation Georgia endured during the affair with Dorothy Norman was a major reason she lived in New Mexico and he lived in New York. Stieglitz had several heart attacks and she would come back and find Mrs. Norman in his hospital room. Georgia would be the one who was with him while he was convalescing after the hospitalizations. The film was shot entirely in New Mexico. Her home and studio in Abiquiu were used for actual interior shots and give the viewer the opportunity to see the minimalism in her life in New Mexico. Despite all the angst she endured during her years with Stieglitz, it was her desire to return to New York for Stieglitz to die in her arms.  

The two films complement each other. Which to watch first? Viewers who do not know much about the subject would probably enjoy the narrative with its intense drama. Watching the documentary first does not give the same insight into the manipulative and abusive personality of Stieglitz that is revealed in the narrative film. The documentary provides considerably more facts and information about the era.
  
The documentary film has several interviews. O’Keeffe’s 1980 interviews are used. Sue Davidson Lowe, whose mother owned the apartment that Georgia lived in, wrote a biography about her great uncle and is in the documentary. But the documentary also relies on a third person narrator  to provide much of the details and that tends to make it more like a lecture. In the narrative film an older O’Keeffe with first person voice over periodically appears. The film effortlessly moves back and forth through time, with costume, makeup and subtle changes in Joan Allen’s voice. A copy of the long buttoned single combination shirt and prairie skirt that O’Keeffe wore for the interviews is worn by Joan Allen in the flash forward portions of the film. 

The narrative film portrays Dorothy Norman as a sexually aggressive, airhead bimbo, who married into Sears and Roebuck money. She is in awe of Stieglitz and O'Keeffe and wants to be what today would be considered a groupie. Actually she came from a prominent family before she was married. She was active in many liberal causes, including The American Civil Liberties Union National Urban League, and the Group Theater. She wrote a weekly column for the New York Post, and edited the literary journal Twice a Year. She spoke German and French. She provided the liberal intellectual assets that Georgia couldn't. Stieglitz taught her photography and her photographs of the avant-garde are held by several museums. Many of the iconic photographs of Stieglitz were taken by Mrs. Norman. Stieglitz needed someone new as O'Keeffe was becoming famous and emerging from the shadow of his tutelage. After Stieglitz's death in 1946 she went on to write his biography as well as several other books.

Filming entirely in New Mexico might be problematic for some viewers who are familiar with Upstate New York or the paintings she did during her visits to Lake George not far from Vermont. The lawn on which she and Stieglitz play croquet is thin and anemic and not like the lush lawns of homes in the region. The pine trees are Pinyon and Ponderosa instead of Eastern White Pine. No, Alfred didn't go to New Mexico to convalesce.

                                                                                                                                                                                       

Top row center and right, and bottom row left, are Jeremy Irons who plays Allred Stieglitz in the film Georgia O'Keeffe. The other three images are Stieglitz.