Music—A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs, No. III 1922

Alfred Stieglitz captured this gelatin silver print, "Music—A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs, No. III" without a specific date. Looking at this image, I'm immediately drawn to the tonality. It's a symphony of grays, from the almost luminous clouds at the top to the shadowy land below. There’s a real push-and-pull here. The texture in the sky feels so soft and yielding. And I'm stuck on those upper clouds - they feel like wet paint. You get the sense that Stieglitz was less interested in a perfect representation and more into capturing a feeling, a mood. It’s as though he’s painting with light, using the camera to translate something deeply felt into a visual form. It makes me think of Gerhard Richter, who also used photography as source material for his paintings. Both artists blur the lines between media, showing us that art is an ongoing conversation about how we see and feel. And, like all good art, this photograph doesn’t give you all the answers, but invites you to bring your own interpretation to the experience.