When Alfred Stieglitz began to study and make photographs in the 1880s his interest was that of a devoted and enthusiastic amateur. This association with the medium manifested itself in the forms available to amateurs at the time: salons, juried exhibitions and camera clubs. It wasn't until Stieglitz was to mature as an artist was he able to finally direct the course of his interests and evolve towards modernism through photography. As Christian A. Peterson, the curator and author of the forthcoming exhibition and catalogue Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Notes (W.W. Norton, 1993) points out, Stieglitz's involvement with the Camera Club of New York represented his final association with an amateur organization and in leaving he turned his back on the hobbyist. Thus, with his resignation as editior of Camera Notes and the subsequent publication of Camera Work the first coherent movement of photography as a fine art began.