In 1890, Stieglitz returned to New York after studying in Germany, with the goal of proving that photography was no less a subject of art than painting or sculpture. As editor of Camera Notes magazine, he sought to convey to readers the aesthetic potential of the medium. In 1902, Stiglitz and a group of like-minded people broke away from the editorial board of the magazine and created their own movement 

Photo-Secession. The group shot documentary and reportage photographs, often depicting the life of the lower strata of society. 

Stieglitz is considered one of the greatest masters of pictorialism, that is, the convergence of the stylistics of photography with painting.