Dorothy Norman collection

Dorothy Norman was born in Philadelphia on March 25, 1905. She was educated at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts (1922-23), and at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1923-25). In June of 1925, she married Edward A. Norman, an heir to the Sears, Roebuck fortune. They had two children, Andrew and Nancy, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1951.

In 1927, Norman visited The Intimate Gallery on Park Avenue in New York City. Soon thereafter, she met Alfred Stieglitz. As their friendship deepened to love, Stieglitz photographed Norman and encouraged her to make her own photographs. He trained her in development and printing techniques, often writing his comments on the verso of her photographs. Norman documented activities and installations in An American Place, Stieglitz’s next gallery. This gave her the opportunity to make portraits of the many artists and writers who were drawn to the gallery. During this period she also photographed extensively in New York City and Cape Cod and created a large body of photographs of her mentor, Stieglitz.

Norman was the publisher and editor of Twice a Year, an arts journal, which appeared from 1938-1948. She wrote a column in The New York Post between 1942 and 1949. After Stieglitz’s death, she published several books devoted to Stieglitz -- Stieglitz Memorial Portfolio (1947) and Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer (1973).

Norman was throughout her life an advocate for social change and a variety of liberal causes including Americans for Democratic Action, the New York Urban League, the American Emergency Food Committee for India, the American Citizens’ Committee for Economic Aid Abroad, the Group Theatre, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the early Planned Parenthood Association. Her friendship with Indira Gandhi and several visits to India resulted in a large body of photographs and several books documenting the great social changes in India in the 1950s.

In 1968, Norman donated a large collection of photographs by herself and Stieglitz to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A selection of these exhibited there that year. A larger number of Norman’s photographs exhibited at the International Center of Photography in New York City in 1993 accompanied by a book, Intimate Visions: The Photographs of Dorothy Norman.

Norman died on April 12, 1997. Her personal papers and photographic works are preserved in the Beinecke Library at Yale University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Center for Creative Photography.