Camera Work. Nos. 1, 25, & 26.

Three issues of the seminal photography periodical, including the inaugural issue, each a presentation copy inscribed by Stieglitz to his friend and collaborator, the philanthropist and civil rights activist Agnes E. Meyer. Camera Work was a quarterly publication that circulated work by some of the world's most important photographers. Stieglitz showcased photography as a fine art and his journal has been called "by far the most beautiful of all photographic magazines" (Whelan). These issues contain 25 photogravures, primarily by members of the Photo-Secession movement. Photographers represented here include founder-members Gertrude Käsebier and Frank Eugene, the iconoclast Anne W. Brigman, and the distinguished portrait photographer Alice Boughton. Meyer was an activist and patron of the arts. One of the first woman journalists hired by the New York Sun, Meyer was nicknamed the "The Sun Girl" in Stieglitz's artistic circle. She was one of his "she Graces", together with the artists Katharine Rhoades and Marion Beckett. Together, she and Stieglitz created and published the art magazine 291 between 1915 and 1916, notable for its printing of the earliest example of visual poetry in America - written by Meyer. Her marriage to the financier Eugene Meyer allowed her the wealth and freedom to advocate for social causes. She influenced national policy by lobbying for the creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and her husband's ownership of the Washington Post gave her a platform to criticize Nixon, campaign against racial inequality, and lampoon McCarthyism as a threat to liberty. Issue I is inscribed on the front free endpaper, "To Agnes Ernst Mayer, 'The Sun Girl', December, 1914"; No. XXV is inscribed on the first blank, "To Agnes E Ernst, with cordial greetings and best wishes, AS. NY, Dec 21/[illegible, perhaps 08]"; No. XXVI is inscribed on the first blank, "With kindest regards, cordially, AS. To Agnes Ernst. Paris. March 10 - 1909". Richard Whelan, Alfred Stieglitz: A Biography, 1995. Three vols, tall quarto. With 24 hand-pulled photogravures and 1 photogravure (not hand-pulled). Bound for presentation in grey quarter cloth, preserving original wrappers pasted onto grey paper-covered sides. Edges worn, faint foxing and offsetting to a few leaves, more so to No. 1, slight loss at head of spine of No. 1, neat paper repair to front cover: a near-fine set. A full description is available on request.…