The Steerage

To the left was an inclining funnel and from the upper steerage deck there was fastened a gangway bridge that was glistening in its freshly painted state.

"[1]Although Stieglitz described "an inclining funnel" in the scene, photographs and models of the ship (see below) show that this object was actually a large mast to which booms were fastened for loading and unloading cargo.

In fact, the picture was taken on a cruise to Europe from America, and so some critics have interpreted it as recording people who were turned away by U.S. Immigration officials and forced to go back home.

Although some of the passengers might have been turned back because of failure to meet financial or health requirements for entrance, it is more likely most were various artisans who worked in the booming construction trade.

[1] Photography historian Beaumont Newhall wrote that it is likely the photo was taken while the ship was anchored at Plymouth, England, because the angle of the shadows indicates it was facing west, not east as it would have been while crossing the ocean.

[1] Stieglitz later said he immediately recognized this image as "another milestone in photography...a step in my own evolution, a spontaneous discovery",[1] but this claim is challenged by several of his biographers who have pointed out that although he had many opportunities to do so he did not publish it until 1911 and did not exhibit it until 1913.

[4][5] In addition, biographer Richard Whelan states, "If he really had known that he had just produced a masterpiece, he probably would not have been so depressed during his European vacation that summer [as he indicated in several letters to friends]".

[4] In the period directly before and after taking The Steerage Stieglitz was still producing photos that were primarily pictorialist in style, and it would be several more years before he began to break with this tradition.

The Steerage represents a "fundamental shift in Stieglitz's thinking",[6] and, critics have said that while his mind had visualized the image when he took it he was not able to articulate his reasons for taking it until later.

[7] Whether that is true or not, it was only after Stieglitz began to seriously consider the works of modern American artists like John Marin, Arthur Dove and Weber that he finally published the image.

While he was still in Paris on the same trip he saw for the first time and experimented with the new Autochrome Lumière process, the first commercially viable means of capturing images in color.