New York Skyline 1942

Dorothy Norman captured the New York skyline in this photograph, a small silver gelatin print, and I wonder what it was like to be her that day. It’s so hazy, the buildings in the background are fading into the sky. The tanks in the foreground are dark and heavy – there’s something gothic about them, like brooding monsters. There’s a lot of depth here, the kind you see in a really good landscape painting. You can tell that Norman chose to take the photo from this angle, to include these things. It kind of reminds me of some of the photos Alfred Stieglitz took of New York. He had this way of making modern life look beautiful and complicated at the same time. I imagine Dorothy Norman and Stieglitz talking about art, each inspiring the other, bouncing ideas around. Photography, like painting, is all about seeing and showing what you see.