Equivalent 1926

This is a photograph, made by Alfred Stieglitz, and it’s simply called *Equivalent*. Right away, that title makes me think about what it means to try and capture something ephemeral, like clouds, and make it equivalent to something else. I see dark and light, a kind of moody drama. The clouds aren’t just clouds; they’re stand-ins for emotions, maybe even ideas. Look how Stieglitz plays with tone, pushing the contrast so the whites almost burn and the darks become these deep, velvety voids. There’s a real physicality to it, even though it's just light hitting film. There's one cloud, right in the middle, almost glowing – it’s like a question mark hanging in the sky. You can see this approach mirrored in the work of Georgia O'Keefe, who, like Stieglitz, found ways to translate the inner life into visible form. It reminds us that art is really about the search, not the answer, and that looking is an act of endless interpretation.