WEBVTT

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[soft music]

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Georgia O\'Keeffe.

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Alfred Stieglitz.

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She was one of America\'s greatest painters,

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an American cultural icon.

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He is considered to be the founding father

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of modern photography.

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[camera clicking]

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[soft music]

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[camera clicking]

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During the 1920\'s, they were the New York

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avant-garde\'s most famous and hottest couple.

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Georgia and Alfred, a 30-year tale of passionate love,

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creative fecundity, but also that

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of a stifling artistic co-dependence.

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[light whimsical music]

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[light pleasant music]

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New York, 1929.

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Georgia was 41, and she needed a change of scenery.

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She dreamt of freedom, solitude and wide open spaces.

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One fine spring morning, she packed her bags,

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and left New York, heading for New Mexico.

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[soft country music]

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In this wild and hostile land,

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everything could start afresh, everything was possible.

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It had been a long time since she\'d felt this good.

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Out in the desert, everything seemed different,

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everything inspired her, the wind, the light, the colors.

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[snake hissing]

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She could invent a new life for herself here,

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write her own myth,

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that of a free woman not dependent on anything or anyone.

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[horse galloping]

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[lively dance music]
[crowd cheering]

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And yet, New York had everything Georgia needed

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to make her happy.

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Exciting times in the midst of the art world,

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artistic recognition, and a comfortable life.

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[light dramatic music]

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She had a husband she loved

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and to whom she owed a lot.

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Alfred Stieglitz.

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It was for him, her love for him,

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that she had moved to New York more than 10 years before.

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[trolly bells ringing]

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New York, Autumn 1916.

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Alfred Stieglitz was 52 years old,

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and a respected figure in the art world.

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[light digital music]

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His Gallery 291 on 5th Avenue

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was a genuine experimental laboratory.

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Within its walls, Stieglitz wanted to explode

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the academic tropes of the 19th Century.

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He was the first person to exhibit

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Rodin, Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse

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and Marcel Duchamp in the United States.

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His gallery was a melting pot of all forms of art,

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upsetting the bourgeois artistic sensibility.

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[soft entertaining music]
[children chattering]

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Even as a child, Stieglitz proved to be a determined,

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provocative and combative character.

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His parents, German Jewish immigrants,

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raised him in a cultured, middle class environment.

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The lad was talented and inventive.

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[bow squeaking]

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Oh.

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He was said to be a somewhat obsessive,

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a little compulsive.

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[quirky rattling]
[people laughing]

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When he was 19, he had only one desire

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to become a photographer.

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He left the USA for a time and enrolled

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at the Berlin polytechnical college.

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This would give him an opportunity to experiment

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and master the techniques of photography.

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[soft music]
[cows mooing]

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Far from the hubbub and gossip of New York,

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Europe revealed to the young man a panoply

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of landscapes and faces,

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and a way of life he had never previously imagined.

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This other world became the source

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of inspirations for his early photography.

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[camera clicking]

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Stieglitz soon joined the pictorialist circle.

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[camera clicking]

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[soft piano music]

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He proclaimed the artistic merits of photography.

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He believed that photographers should free themselves

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from the shackles of painting and espouse

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their own vision of the world,

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a direct vision with no artifice.

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[waves splashing]

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[ship horn honking]

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After eight years in Europe, Stieglitz returned to New York.

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[children laughing]

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He had started to miss the excitement

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and energy of the city he grew up in.

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[soft guitar music]

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Alfred made New York his new playground

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and experimental lab.

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[camera clicking]

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He roamed the city and found powerful

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and diverse subject matter

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which turned his relationship with art on its head.

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[camera clicking]

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[horse snorting]

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The precision of the contours, working with natural light,

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the aesthetics of picture-taking all created

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a visual distillation of reality.

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[wind howling]

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People started speaking of pure photography.

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[camera clicking]

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In \"The Steerage\" Alfred captured the image

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of a crowd of migrants on the deck of an ocean liner.

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The image was not cropped.

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The facial expressions were what was important.

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[soft music]

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This photograph is a milestone,

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as it is an image based on the rapport between forms

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and the deepest human sentiment, a step in my own evolution.

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[quirky humming]

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Henceforth, Stieglitz would become

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the spokesmen for modern photography.

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[soft guitar music]

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He had been married for 24 years to a rich heiress

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by the name of Emmeline.

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The couple lived a quiet life with their daughter Kitty.

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But Alfred was frustrated.

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[light whimsical music]

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He had long dreamed of creating a photographic journal.

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It was an ambitious project,

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a long-term photographic study of the evolution

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of a face over the years.

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[soft piano music]

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Alfred hoped his daughter Kitty

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would be the subject of this project.

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From her very youngest days he photographed her incessantly.

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[camera clicking]

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Her face became his obsession.

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But one day, exasperated by these constant photo-shoots,

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Emmeline put an end to her husband\'s photographic ambition.

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[light whimsical music]

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Stieglitz put an end to his project.

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[loud booming]

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[soft music]

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On that fateful day, Alfred was, as ever, at the gallery.

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Someone brought him a series of charcoal drawings,

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entitled \"Specials\", by an unknown female artist,

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the drawings were free and audacious.

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\"Finally, A woman on paper!\" he cried.

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\"Who can be hiding behind the free style

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\"of these pencil strokes?\"

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[light guitar music]

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The artist\'s name was Georgia O\'Keefe.

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She was 29 years old, and had just bowled

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into town from South Carolina.

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Everything about her had a breath of deepest America.

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She came from a large family of Irish peasant stock.

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She had spent her childhood running about the family farm.

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As an adolescent, she defied convention

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and her supposed destiny.

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She wanted to be an artist.

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Her early work was inspired by the landscape around her.

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Georgia earned her living from advertising

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and industrial drawing.

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[light guitar music]

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But after five years, she became restless.

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Georgia wanted to emancipate herself

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from everything she had learned.

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I said to myself,

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I have things in my head that are not

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like what anyone has taught me,

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shapes and ideas so near to me.

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So natural to my way of being and thinking

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that it hasn\'t occurred to me to put them down.

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I decided to start anew and strip away

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what I had been taught.

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[soft piano music]

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She produced a series of very personal

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charcoal drawings, the \"Specials\".

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She no longer used nature as her model,

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but rather her own feelings.

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The shapes were abstract and represented her inner world.

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At the age of 29, she was about to invent it all,

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her life and her work.

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[crowd chattering]

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[train wheels clacking]

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Alfred invited Georgia to New York.

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He discovered a young woman with a magnetic personality.

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[soft music]
[water bubbling]

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She in turn was bewitched by the photographer\'s charisma.

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The 23 years between them mattered little.

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[water splashing]

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Georgia needed a mentor.

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Alfred needed a muse.

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[sprayer hissing]

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For years, he had sought a new face

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which would fulfill his ambition to create

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a photographic journal.

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He nicknamed her White Light,

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and started photographing her in front of her Specials.

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[camera clicking]

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It became an obsession.

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[crowd whistling]
[lively music]

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Alfred introduced Georgia to the artistic world of New York.

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[upbeat organ music]

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He believed in her and in her talent.

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[upbeat music]

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He wanted to launch her career.

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He saw her as a modern woman,

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a free artist leading the New York avant-garde.

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[light guitar music]

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The young woman now divided her life

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between New York and Texas.

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The two artist began

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a regular and passionate correspondence.

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Dear Georgia, it is useless to say

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that it is my soul which needs you.

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I know full well that it is my body, my blood, my flesh.

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Dearest, I wonder if your body wants mine

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the way mine wants yours.

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The kisses, the hotness, the wetness, all melting together.

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[upbeat music]

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In June 1918, Georgia O\'Keeffe

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finally left Texas for New York.

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She wanted to be closer to Alfred

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and devote herself to her work.

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But Alfred Stieglitz was still married,

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so the two artists pursued their romance

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behind closed doors, in the intimacy of a workshop

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or during a photo shoot.

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[soft entertaining music]

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Alfred no longer contented himself

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with photographing Georgia\'s face.

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[camera clicking]

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He now wanted to capture on film her grace,

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sensuality and pure eroticism.

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[camera clicking]

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My dear Georgia, how I burned to photograph you,

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your hands, your mouth, your eyes, your throat.

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[camera clicking]

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The clarity of the photos,

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their choice of frame defied the sexual

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and moral conventions of the time.

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[soft piano music]

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But Alfred had been a married man for nearly 30 years.

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His wife Emmeline could no longer bear

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the rumors about her husband.

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[quirky rattling]
[whimsical music]

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My dear Georgia, my wife has never really understood

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the meaning of life, let alone the feelings of others.

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[soft piano music]

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With the financial support of her mentor,

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Georgia set to work.

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She painted the canvas with huge flowers.

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Inspired by the photographers she knew,

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she painted in full frontals and close ups.

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These enlargements were a schism

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with the traditional representation of still life.

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[soft piano music]

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I know I cannot paint a flower,

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but maybe in terms of color I can convey to you

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my experience of the flower or the experience

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that makes the flower of significance

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to me at a particular time.

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[bright piano music]

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[bike tires buzzing]
[bike horn squeaking]

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[dog barking]

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[water splashing]

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[bright piano music]

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Alfred used his address book

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to organize Georgia\'s exhibitions.

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He was very passionate about the sensuality of her work.

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He encouraged the critics who found,

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within the paintings, all manner of sexual connotation,

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and hidden representations of the male

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and female sexual organs.

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[soft entertaining music]

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Georgia became the new darling of the art world,

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and her popularity went through the roof.

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[bell dinging]

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New York, December 1924.

283
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Emmeline agreed to a divorce.

284
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After a six-year affair, Alfred and Georgia were married.

285
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Georgia did not want a ceremony,

286
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and even refused to take Stieglitz\'s name.

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She wanted to keep her own name and independence.

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[soft entertaining music]

289
00:16:30.755 --> 00:16:34.600
[automobile engine sputtering]

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From the Shelton hotel where they lived,

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they absorbed inspiration from the city.

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[light digital music]

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00:16:40.470 --> 00:16:43.383
Georgia started producing urban views of skyscrapers.

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Alfred took a multitude of shots from their flat

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in what was then the highest hotel in the city.

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[camera clicking]

297
00:16:56.120 --> 00:16:59.830 line:15%
For the first time, their work started to coalesce.

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For both Georgia and Alfred,

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New York was an empty city of pure

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and vertical lines, with no people.

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[boat horn rumbling]

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[soft guitar music]
[birds chirping]

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Every summer, the couple would go back to lake George,

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and Alfred\'s family home.

305
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Far away from it all, the couple no longer

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had to play their roles.

307
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Here, Georgia no longer had to be the sensual icon

308
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and liberated woman that Stieglitz had created,

309
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and he was no longer the charismatic mentor.

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[camera clicking]

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Alfred began his \"Equivalents\" series, fragments of clouds,

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00:17:54.620 --> 00:17:57.750
which he saw as a metaphysical exploration of emotion

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as well as a radical aesthetic experiment.

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[light guitar music]

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I wanted to photograph clouds to see

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what I had learned in 40 years about photography.

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Through clouds to put down my philosophy of life.

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I\'m showing that photography owes nothing

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to its subject matter.

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[lightning zapping]
[light music]

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Georgia was nearly 40 and wanted a child.

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She could feel herself getting older.

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But Alfred would not hear of it.

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[soft orchestra music]

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For a while now, Alfred was somehow different.

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Georgia soon worked out why this was when she saw

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this woman showing an interest in her husband.

328
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How could Alfred resist?

329
00:18:58.730 --> 00:19:00.230
And how could Georgia compete?

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The young woman\'s name was Dorothy Norman.

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She was very, very beautiful, and very, very young,

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40 years younger than Alfred

333
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and 18 years younger than Georgia.

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[soft piano music]

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The young woman dreamed of becoming a photographer.

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Stieglitz became her mentor

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00:19:22.410 --> 00:19:24.533
and she became his new muse.

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[camera clicking]

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Their similarity was troubling.

340
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History was repeating itself.

341
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Georgia was wounded.

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At the age of 42, she felt that her life

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and her work were no longer her own.

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[soft piano muisc]

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Her dependence on Stieglitz, his gaze and his address book,

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were stifling her.

347
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She felt misunderstood both as woman and as an artist.

348
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[wind rustling]

349
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Georgia sank into a deep depression and was hospitalized.

350
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Little by little she stopped painting.

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[dark music]

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[horse neighing]

353
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New Mexico, 1934.

354
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Georgia had not touched her brushes in a year.

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[light entertaining music]

356
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New Mexico was a breath of fresh air.

357
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She felt good there.

358
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My immediate problem is getting

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order back into my life,

360
00:20:46.320 --> 00:20:48.640
and I feel that my decision to head west

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was the best thing for me to do at this present time.

362
00:20:52.060 --> 00:20:54.130
I feel much better in every way,

363
00:20:54.130 --> 00:20:56.480
because I am getting on with what I need to do.

364
00:20:58.830 --> 00:21:00.870
She started collecting animal bones

365
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and keeping them in her house.

366
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Here she felt free to create again,

367
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without Stieglitz\'s shadow on her canvas.

368
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[light guitar music]

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She started painting more and more skulls, pelvic bones.

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A way, her way, of triumphing

371
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over her anxiety about maternity.

372
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Her paintings revealed her attachment to the American land.

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Sometimes the flowers would make an appearance,

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like ghosts of the past.

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[light guitar music]

376
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[soft pleasant music]

377
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[horse neighing]

378
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Georgia made a new life for herself

379
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among the Pueblo Indians and the old local cowboys.

380
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She wanted to turn her back on New York\'s demi-monde

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and the image of an eroticized muse in her husband\'s lens.

382
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With her car as her workshop, she roamed the desert.

383
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She went back to basics.

384
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She marked her territory, defined it.

385
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She made a new identity for herself.

386
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[soft pleasant music]

387
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New York, 1937.

388
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[light drum beats]

389
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Alfred was now 70.

390
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[dramatic music]

391
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He had had a series of heart attacks.

392
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He wished to reclaim his muse, and see her back by his side.

393
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[bed crashing]

394
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But she was not coming back.

395
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[light music]

396
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Having lost Georgia, Alfred brought his photographic

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journal project to an end.

398
00:23:39.600 --> 00:23:41.043
The separation was hard.

399
00:23:42.160 --> 00:23:43.700
Alfred wrote to Georgia,

400
00:23:43.700 --> 00:23:46.180
sometimes writing two or three letters a day,

401
00:23:46.180 --> 00:23:48.781
some of them more than 40 pages long.

402
00:23:48.781 --> 00:23:50.660
[typewriter clicking]

403
00:23:50.660 --> 00:23:52.600
I am with you wherever you are.

404
00:23:52.600 --> 00:23:54.300
And I know you are always with me.

405
00:23:56.330 --> 00:23:57.950
I have not forgotten you like you

406
00:23:57.950 --> 00:24:00.550
said I would as soon as hit the road.

407
00:24:00.550 --> 00:24:02.003
I think about you a lot.

408
00:24:08.500 --> 00:24:10.350
Alfred knew he was no longer in vogue

409
00:24:10.350 --> 00:24:11.820
as he once had been.

410
00:24:11.820 --> 00:24:14.160
He was starting to be forgotten.

411
00:24:14.160 --> 00:24:17.630
He needed not just Georgia but also her paintings.

412
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[light music]

413
00:24:19.290 --> 00:24:22.133
He was financially dependent on his wife\'s sales.

414
00:24:23.610 --> 00:24:26.180
He carried on exhibiting Georgia\'s work,

415
00:24:26.180 --> 00:24:28.270
with a new narrative this time,

416
00:24:28.270 --> 00:24:30.660
that of a free woman who was constrained

417
00:24:30.660 --> 00:24:32.960
by nothing but the impossible,

418
00:24:32.960 --> 00:24:35.393
was painting amidst the solitude of New Mexico.

419
00:24:40.680 --> 00:24:43.410
The love and torrid passion of yesteryear

420
00:24:43.410 --> 00:24:47.643
had mutated into moving tenderness and an unbreakable bond.

421
00:24:48.970 --> 00:24:51.933
Alfred and Georgia never stopped writing to each other.

422
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[soft music]

423
00:24:56.459 --> 00:24:59.530
Alfred died of a heart attack at the age of 82

424
00:24:59.530 --> 00:25:01.173
with Georgia by his side.

425
00:25:02.900 --> 00:25:06.943
She died in in Santa Fe in 1986, aged 98.

426
00:25:08.200 --> 00:25:12.350
Today, she is the world\'s most valuable female artist.

427
00:25:12.350 --> 00:25:15.500
Towards the end of her life, the now famous Georgia

428
00:25:15.500 --> 00:25:18.120
placed Alfred at the forefront of her career,

429
00:25:18.120 --> 00:25:20.860
admitting that she owed him everything.

430
00:25:20.860 --> 00:25:23.810
This created a new interest in Stieglitz\'s photos

431
00:25:23.810 --> 00:25:25.503
which America had forgotten.

432
00:25:26.460 --> 00:25:29.080
It was only 20 years after Georgia\'s death

433
00:25:29.080 --> 00:25:31.010
that the couple\'s correspondence,

434
00:25:31.010 --> 00:25:34.433
all 25,000 letters of it, was made public.

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[light whimsical music]