Equivalent K1 1929

Alfred Stieglitz made this small photograph, Equivalent K1, by pointing his camera up at the sky. It's a reminder that art isn't just about what you see, but how you see it. There’s this huge dark void on one side, a field of nothingness, and then, BAM, a burst of light and cloud. I find myself wondering if Stieglitz saw the clouds as emotional stand-ins, like abstract feelings floating in the ether. The textures in this piece, it’s all about atmosphere. The way the light catches the edges of the clouds is so delicate, so fleeting. It makes me think about painting, about how we try to capture something that's always changing. It reminds me of Gerhard Richter's cloud paintings, the way he blurs the line between representation and abstraction, only here it's done with light and shadow, and all those shades of gray. For Stieglitz, it’s about finding the emotional equivalent in the world around him, and that's a pretty cool idea.