Stieglitz Key Set has arrived

Look what just arrived! Here are hurried and excited (and blurry) pictures of the Alfred Stieglitz | The Key Set, edited by Sarah Greenough. It is a complete record of his photographs, including all of the Georgia O’Keeffe portraits. In two hefty volumes.

O’Keeffe selected the best print of every mounted photograph in Stieglitz’s possession at the time of his death in 1946 and collected them into what she called the “key set.” It was donated in 1949 and 1980 to the National Gallery of Art, which published the collection (1.642 photos in all) as this book in 2002.

Decades later O’Keeffe recalled the earliest sessions: “My hands had always been admired since I was a little girl — but I never thought much about it. He wanted head and hands and arms on a pillow — in many different positions. I was asked to move my hands in many different ways — also my head — and I had to turn this way and that.” And remember, early photography: she had to hold still for quite a while . . .