Alvin Langdon Coburn: Photographs 1900-1924 “Photographs 1900-1924”

Born into a prosperous Boston family, Alvin Langdon Coburn was given his first Kodak camera at the age of eight. His serious photographic career began before the age of twenty, when an exhibition of American photography opened at the Royal Photographic Society with nine of his photos. In 1902 Coburn moved to New York City, where he became reacquainted with Edward Steichen and met Alfred Stieglitz and Gertrude Kasebier for the first time. Kasebier became Coburn’s teacher in those first years, and Stieglitz his mentor and promoter. In 1904 Coburn settled in London, where he became known for his photographs of prominent people, especially artists and writers. In his early years he also photographed a number of abstract cityscapes, but the works for which he is most widely known are his “vortographs”, kaleidoscopic images created in the Cubist style. Documenting the full scope of Coburn’s work, this important volume delineates the role the photographer played in the early years of the medium and portrays a brilliant career that intersected those of many other luminaries during an exhilarating artistic era.