Barn & Snow 1923

Alfred Stieglitz made this gelatin silver print, “Barn & Snow”, with a camera, and it's the making that gets me. Look at the way the snow sits on the rooftops and clings to the fence. It's like thick impasto paint, yet it's light itself that has been captured, not pigment. The surface of the wood, with its horizontal planks, creates a rhythm, a kind of musical score written in shadow. And the snow, oh, it softens everything, turning harsh angles into gentle curves. There is a stark elegance in the composition, the way the two buildings nestle together, yet the details are so tenderly observed. Stieglitz, like many of us painters, was fascinated by the way light could be coaxed to reveal hidden beauty in the everyday. He reminds me a little of Edward Hopper, actually, in his ability to find poetry in the ordinary, but the softness here suggests the later work of Gerhard Richter, I think, artmaking as an act of discovery.