Large-format photogravure on Imperial Japon Vellum. Image size 33x26.2 cm (13x10¼"), on sheet 46.5x31.7 cm (18¼x12½"). Offered together with the integral double issue (number 7-8) of 291, with which the photogravure was issued.

A fine example of this iconic image, hailed as “one of the greatest photographs of all time.” Taken in 1907, the Steerage is both a formative document of its time and one of the first works of artistic modernism. Stieglitz had for a number of years been the most prominent early champion of photography as fine art, but The Steerage represents a fundamental shift in Stieglitz’s thinking away from a pictorialist conception of photography. “You may call this a crowd of immigrants,” Stieglitz himself wrote about The Steerage, but “to me it is a study in mathematical lines, in balance, in a pattern of light and shade.”  Celebrated for its abstractionist exploration of shape, tone, and texture, The Steerage is deemed one of the first proto-Cubist works of art. Taken in June 1907 aboard a passenger ship on which Stieglitz traveled to Europe, The Steerage was photographed when Stieglitz wandered off from his first-class section of the boat into its lowest-class “steerage” area.  Stieglitz was held “spellbound” by the scene he encountered – not only by its obvious humanity, but even more so by what Stieglitz himself called “a picture of shapes."

The photograph was subsequently published in the October 1911 issue of Camera Work and first exhibited publicly in 1913 at a show of Stieglitz’s photographs at his 291 gallery. In 1915 Stieglitz devoted the entire double issue 7-8 of his art journal 291 to The Steerage, into which large photogravures of the photograph were loosely inlaid and for which Paul Haviland and Marius de Zayas wrote commentary. Copies of the image were produced on both Imperial Japon Vellum and  mounted tissue paper. The Steerage is the only photogravure ever to  appear in 291. This large-size print is the preferred collecting format of the photograph.