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Dorothy True

1919
Not on view
First published in 1921 with the caption "Watch your step!" in the single issue of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray’s magazine New York Dada, Stieglitz’s surreal portrait was a happy accident. Attempting to capture the modern character of Dorothy True, a friend of Georgia O’Keeffe, Stieglitz made two exposures: a conventional, full-face portrait and a view of one artfully posed leg. Stieglitz was thrilled with the fortuitous superimposition of the images, believing that together they captured the spirit of the postwar American female. While the equation of short hair and skirts with women’s liberation might seem trite today, Stieglitz made the portrait in 1919, the year that Congress extended suffrage to women. In 1926, he exhibited it with the title American Girl.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Dorothy True
  • Artist: Alfred Stieglitz (American, Hoboken, New Jersey 1864–1946 New York)
  • Date: 1919
  • Medium: Gelatin silver print
  • Dimensions: 24.3 x 19.3 cm (9 9/16 x 7 5/8 in.)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Gift of Paul Rosenfeld, 1928
  • Object Number: 28.126
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

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