Even though I love photography and painting, I’ve never really been into Georgia O’Keeffe or Alfred Stieglitz. Somehow, their work has escaped me for many years. But yesterday, I went in search of a photograph that I had seen in high school, in one of Ms. Dosick’s slide shows on art and photography. It was a picture of a woman in a hat, and I vaguely remember her saying that it was Georgia O’Keeffe.

It didn’t take me long to find the photograph. And along the way in discovering it, I found out that it was taken by Alfred Stieglitz, a photographer who was married at the time that he met O’Keeffe. Eventually he left his wife and married Georgia, and he was to take many more photos of her in his lifetime. He was considerably older than she was, I think over 20 years.

I began to wonder about these photos. In all of them, Georgia is beautifully captured, the tones of her skin milky and warm, or stark white against the blackness of the rest of the photograph. And the way she looks at the camera, or doesn’t….it entrances me. I want to know more about their relationship, and who they were as people. What made Alfred want to take so many shots of Georgia?

I have always wanted to take photographs of people like this, in the same way Stieglitz viewed O’Keeffe. But I also want to be the person in the photo, and have someone see me as Georgia, as the person with the far off look, or the serious thought. And I don’t think I have any photographs of myself like that. I wonder if I will ever have an Alfred in my life, someone who photographs me over and over, in various places, with different expressions. In hats, or wearing a cape. With my car. But in that classic photography look that is so rare now. Yet so timeless.

You have to be really close to someone to get great photographs like the ones that Alfred took. She trusted him, loved him enough to let him into her space, her world. And she wasn’t afraid of what the camera would pick up, even let him photograph her nude. I think too often that people don’t like their appearance, and so shy away from the camera, hide themselves away. I believe the best photographs happen when we aren’t even aware that the camera is there. When we let our inhibitions out the window. When we let others in.

We shall see if I can recreate the style of Stieglitz in my own photography. And maybe someday, I shall enchant someone to take their own photos of me.