Hedwig Stieglitz and Katherine Herzig, Lake George 1919 - 1922

Alfred Stieglitz made this photo of Hedwig Stieglitz and Katherine Herzig at Lake George, using a camera. It’s a small picture but it carries a lot of weight. The image is full of soft, gentle gradations of tone. Look at the way the light seems to settle on the women’s dresses, creating a kind of luminous glow around them. There’s a beautiful intimacy to the scene, like a stolen moment caught in time. The texture of the print itself is smooth, almost velvety, which adds to the dreamlike quality. Stieglitz was interested in photography as a fine art, and you can see him experimenting with its potential here. This reminds me of paintings by someone like Gerhard Richter, who also explored the blurred boundaries between photography and painting, reality and representation. Ultimately, the beauty of this piece lies in its ambiguity, inviting us to linger, to question, and to find our own meaning within its frame.