Bear with me, I am writing my thesis on the sublime WCW and am going to use this blogging space as a way to keep my sources in order.Peter Schmidt, who wrote some of the seminal critical essays on WCW, suggests that there were three artistic movements that influenced him the most: European Cubism, American Dada/Surrealism, and Steiglitz-esque photography. I will begin by looking at some examples of the latter.
Alfred Steiglitz is popularly accredited with being the man who made photography acceptable as a "real" art-form. The image on the right, 'The Steerage' is probably his most famous. He is the eyes of a New York in its infancy, and documented the experiences of immigrants and the changes wrought by the rapid industrialisation of the early 20th century.
It is the nature of the photograph that nothing is hidden or essentialised. The mundane details of daily life are the essential touchstones for the composition. 
In a sense, this aesthetic is the antithesis of that espoused by the cubists, who attempted, above all else, to pare away visual and symbolic clutter to find the essentials of colour and form - that could be beautiful in themselves, without needing to re-present something "real". Photography can never escape reality in the same way. It can frame it, repackage it, hold it still, but never do away with it.
