ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation / Thesis: “LIVING ON PAPER ...

ewery. As Stieglitz wrote to Mitchell Kennerley of Anderson Galleries, “My family
and I have been badly hit. So badly, that I am compelled to give up 291 and Camera
Work.” 219
On her return, O’Keeffe wrote to Pollitzer, “being in N. Y. again for a few days
was great – I guess I did as much in the ten days as I usually do in a year.” She saw old
friends and mentors like Dorothy True, Alon Bement, Charles Martin, and Arthur
Macmahon. 220
Stieglitz introduced O’Keeffe to such important modernists as John
Marin, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, and the young photographer Paul Strand. 221
O’Keeffe told Pollitzer about Strand, “Dorothy and I both fell for him[.] He showed me
lots and lots of prints – photographs – And I almost lost my mind over them –
Photographs that are as queer in shapes as Picasso drawings.” 222
This early admission of
O’Keeffe’s interest in art photography is interesting in that it shows the relationship she
saw between photography and drawing. The connection of those particular two media,
rather than simply photography and modern art, seems important since she chose to
specify that she related Strand’s photographs to Picasso’s drawings rather than to his
paintings.
But O’Keeffe told Pollitzer, “Stieglitz – Well – it was him I went to see – Just had
to go Anita – There wasn’t any way out of it – and I’m so glad I went.” 223
Stieglitz was
cheered by the return of his new star artist. He paid her the greatest attention that he
could – he photographed her. Expressing his esteem for both artist and art, he took
advantage of his rehanging of O’Keeffe’s exhibition to pose her with her watercolor Blue
I (Figs. 5.2-4). O’Keeffe said, “A few weeks after I returned to Texas, photographs of
me came – two portraits of my face against one of my large watercolors and three
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