New York is undoubtedly the most photographed city in the world and one man, more than any other, turned the picturemaking of Gotham into an art form. In fact, photography itself became a recognized art thanks to him.

Alfred Stieglitz had the gumption, in 1893, to leave behind his large, “serious” view camera and take to the streets with what at the time was considered little more than an amateur’s toy. His hand-held Graflex, though unwieldy and slow by today’s standards, offered the freedom of movement that no tripod-laden camera of its day could.

The new equipment, and the sensitivity of vision he brought to it, quickly yielded two of his most famous photographs: “The Terminal,” shown above, and  “Winter—Fifth Avenue,” both providing the moody, dark view of ordinary city life that would characterize his early, influential work.

“As an artist he took the hand-held camera and said, ‘I can use this to capture something of the greatness of New York,’” said Bonnie Yochelson, the curator of “Alfred Stieglitz New York,” a major exhibition that opens Sept. 15 at the South Street Seaport Museum.

Yochelson, the former curator of photography at the Museum of the City of New York, has assembled 39 Stieglitz prints into three rooms. The first, containing Stieglitz’s New York photogravure images from 1893 to 1916, is meant to evoke his Gallery 291, where he introduced major artists of all types—including photographers—and established photography on a par with the other arts.

After 1916, Stieglitz would not turn his lens on the city again for another 15 years. When he did, he no longer imbued his pictures with the soft-focus treatment of his early work but instead made images that were “crisp and hard,” as Yochelson puts it, taken from the window of his midtown apartment. The second room of the exhibit recalls that New York period and his gallery of the time, An American Place. It was there, in 1932, that Stieglitz showed his New York work from both periods, and they had not been assembled together again until now.

As Yochelson points out, Stieglitz did not photograph New York in a vacuum. Many other photographers of his day chose the city as their subject and in the exhibition’s third room, viewers can see his work in the context of images by Berenice Abbott, Paul Strand, Lewis Hine and lesser-known photographers.

Stieglitz’s career spanned six decades, a period when, Yochelson notes,  the city was taking shape in the way that we know it today. But his interests did not lie in its vitality.

“He was constantly asserting his own brooding temperament on the city,”  Yochelson says. “Flatiron Building,” one of his most famous pictures, taken in 1903, is a classic example.

“That was the busiest intersection of the city at that time and he goes deep into the park so there is an almost woodland setting with the snow covering everything in a haze.” The photograph, she says, is a reflection of Stieglitz’s dark personality. “His view is eccentric.”

And he aimed at making difficult art, Yochelson says. For today’s audience, flooded with imagery that is easy and instantly made, Stieglitz’s mostly small, monochromatic photos offer a special challenge. 

“If you slow down and look carefully at the pictures, then there’s something to be gotten out of them,” she says. “But you have to really pay attention or you might miss it.”

“And I think,” the curator added, “that’s what Stieglitz would expect.”

“Alfred Stieglitz New York” at South Street Seaport Museum, 12 Fulton St. 9/15–1/10, 2011. Tue-Sun, 10 am to 6 pm $15, seniors and students $12.