more than a number

I am not very good at numbers. However there are some you have to remember, like personal identification numbers (PIN) if you want to get in to your house (entrance code) or pay with a credit card in the supermarket etc.

Then there are some numbers I remember with ease - like the birthdays of my children and grandson. Some numbers are special to me for another reason - like 291.

[Alfred Stieglitz], ca. 1907 / Alvin Langdon Coburn, photographer.
1 photographic print : b&w ; 36 x 28 cm. Miscellaneous photograph
collection. Archives of American Art.

Alfred Stieglitz´s Photo-Secession gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue, New York opened 1905 and existed until 1917 as a major force to promote photography, painted art and sculpture to a sometimes not too impressed audience.

This is what a critic wrote about Pablo Picasso the Spanish painter who was introduced for the first time in USA at "291": "Any sane criticism is entirely out of the question; any serious analysis would be vain. The results suggest the most violent wards of an asylum for maniacs, the craziest emanations of a disordered mind, the gibberings of a lunatic!”/Arthur Hoeber in the New York Globe

Other artists seen at "291" were Matisse, Cezanne and Rodin.

There are a lot of interesting articles written about 291 and Stieglitz and a documentary (American Masters) made by PBS.Alfred Stieglitz also published the legendary journal Camera Work between 1903-1917. The journal played an important part in the history of photography and reflects a turning point - from pictoralism to modernism. Read this interesting article by Charles Hagen, NY Times 1992.