Georgia O'Keeffe--Torso. Artist: Alfred Stieglitz (American, Hoboken, New Jersey 1864-1946 New York). Dimensions: 23.6 x 18.8 cm (9 5/16 x 7 3/8 in.). Date: 1918.
This photograph, one of over three hundred images Stieglitz made of O'Keeffe (1887-1986) between 1917 and 1937, is part of an extraordinary composite portrait. Stieglitz believed that portraiture concerned more than merely the face and that it should be a record of a person's life experience, a mosaic of expressive movements, emotions, and gestures that would function collectively to evoke a life. "To demand the portrait that will be a complete portrait of any person," he claimed, "is as futile as to demand that a motion picture be condensed into a single still.".