Poplars - Lake George 1935

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph of poplars at Lake George, and I’m immediately drawn to the way the silvery light kind of dissolves the forms. It reminds me of when I start a painting, that lovely moment of potential where everything is still fluid. Looking at the materiality of this print, the grayscale is so nuanced, it's like he's painting with light. See how the trees in the foreground are almost velvety, then your eye travels up to those stark, skeletal poplars against the pale sky? It's not just a record of a scene, it’s an emotional landscape. I like how those bare branches reach up, almost like he’s trying to capture something just out of reach. There’s an early Paul Strand photograph, maybe from around the same time, where he's also playing with these tonal ranges, pushing photography towards abstraction. It makes you think about how artists are always in conversation, trying to pin down something that’s ultimately un-pinnable.