Winter, New York c. 1893

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph, Winter, New York, using the gelatin silver process. A relatively new technology at the time, this process involves coating a support—in this case, paper—with light-sensitive silver halide crystals suspended in gelatin. The appeal of photography, then as now, was its apparent indexicality: the sense that the image is somehow made by the object itself, via the agency of light. But that immediacy obscures all the labor and materials involved. This image, for instance, required Stieglitz to brave harsh weather, lugging heavy equipment through the snow-filled streets of New York. We can also consider the industrial-scale processes needed to manufacture the photographic paper itself. Ultimately, the ethereal quality of the image is directly connected to the materiality of its making: the light-catching silver, the absorbent paper, and the very real conditions endured by the photographer, all combining to capture a fleeting moment in time. By acknowledging these material dimensions, we gain a deeper understanding of the photograph's artistic and social significance.