The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 23, 2024

The Rag Picker

The Rag Picker

1892
(American, 1864–1946)
America, 19th century
gelatin silver print
Image: 8.6 x 7.6 cm (3 3/8 x 3 in.); Paper: 8.6 x 7.6 cm (3 3/8 x 3 in.); Mounted: 26.8 x 20.6 cm (10 9/16 x 8 1/8 in.)
Gift of Diann G. Mann and Thomas A. Mann 2019.21
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

Only three prints of this image are known to exist, and all are in museum collections.

Description

In the early 1890s, Alfred Stieglitz roamed downtown New York City streets with his most portable camera and photographed the city’s street life. “I loathed the dirty streets, yet I was fascinated,” he recalled. In 19th-century New York, rag pickers earned a meager living by gathering rags and other trash from garbage cans and refuse heaps and selling them to recyclers.
  • Alfred Stieglitz (the artist)
    Edward Dahlberg
    November 5, 1984
    Sotheby's, New York, NY
    November 5, 1984
    Thomas A. and Diann G. Mann, Palm Beach Gardens, FL
    March 4, 2019
    the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • National Gallery of Art (U.S.), Sarah Greenough, and Alfred Stieglitz. Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set : the Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2002. p. 45, cat. no. 76
  • {{cite web|title=The Rag Picker|url=false|author=Alfred Stieglitz|year=1892|access-date=23 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2019.21