Birds 1922

Alfred Stieglitz captured these birds with his camera, sometime in his lifetime, resulting in this delicate print. I can almost feel what it was like for Stieglitz to raise his camera to the sky. Framing these little birds perched on electrical wires must have felt poignant. There they are, lined up like musical notes on a staff. Is it a song? A complaint? You wonder what Stieglitz was thinking at this moment. The tones in the image are soft and gentle, it is a study in grey-scale. The sky looks dramatic, like a stormy backdrop in a Renaissance painting. The birds themselves look fragile and precious. They are holding on for dear life, facing the wind. There is a relationship between these birds and the power lines they are sitting on; nature and technology brought together in one image. Isn't it funny how artists are always in conversation with one another, across time? There’s something about seeing these birds that reminds me of a Cy Twombly painting; a sense of gesture, movement, and the delicate balance between chaos and order.