Equivalent c. 1927

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph, called Equivalent, with a camera, paper, and some chemicals; the real magic of the process is in how light gets captured and transformed. It is a small, intimate print, full of feathery greys that push against a dark ground. I can almost feel the dampness of the emulsion, like the humidity before a storm. Look at how the clouds form this strange, ambiguous shape, it’s like looking at a Rorschach test. The edges of the clouds, a mix of soft and sharp focus, convey the sense of constant motion and change. This photograph reminds me of Gerhard Richter’s cloud paintings, not just in its subject matter, but in its exploration of abstraction through the lens of realism. Like Richter, Stieglitz finds a way to embrace the ephemeral quality of light and atmosphere, reminding us that art is always a conversation between the seen and the unseen, the real and the imagined.