Songs of the Sky A6 1923

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph, Songs of the Sky A6, with a camera. Look at the almost painterly way Stieglitz has captured these clouds, almost like brushstrokes across the sky. It is easy to forget this image was made with a camera, and not paint! The texture is really interesting here. The clouds are not smooth, but turbulent. This adds a real sense of drama and movement. The light is also amazing, creating depth and contrast, and gives an almost dreamlike quality to the image. Notice how the light catches the edges of the clouds, creating a halo effect. Stieglitz was part of the Photo-Secession movement, which advocated for photography as a fine art. Like the work of his contemporary Georgia O’Keefe, this photograph moves beyond representation toward abstraction. Instead of being a simple depiction of clouds, it becomes an expression of emotion, and of an inner world.