Margaret Prosser 1936

Alfred Stieglitz made this gelatin silver print of Margaret Prosser sometime in the early twentieth century. It's a close-up, intimate portrait, and you get the sense that Stieglitz really saw her, that he captured something essential about her being. I wonder what it was like to be in Stieglitz's studio, to sit for him, to be seen through his lens. He was so influential in bringing modern art to America, so attuned to the emotional power of the image. In this photograph, the dark background makes Margaret's face and patterned top come forward. The soft light rakes across her face and illuminates her expression, and her eyes seem full of knowing. There's a quiet strength in her gaze, a resilience etched into the lines of her face. Stieglitz doesn't shy away from showing her age; instead, he embraces it, finding beauty in the realness of her lived experience. Like a painter building up layers of pigment, Stieglitz coaxes out the subtleties of light and shadow to create a portrait that feels both timeless and deeply personal. You can see that the Modernists were not only painters, they were photographers too and all in conversation with each other.