Equivalent 1930

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph of clouds, called "Equivalent," and it's like looking at a painting. I can imagine Stieglitz looking up, framing a piece of the sky, and waiting for just the right moment. There's a range of grays, from almost white to deep charcoal, capturing the ephemeral, ever-shifting forms of the clouds. When he printed it in the darkroom, Stieglitz probably wanted to capture the fleeting nature of light and atmosphere. It reminds me of Gerhard Richter’s cloud paintings, where he blurs the image until it is almost unrecognizable. This photograph and Richter’s paintings share an interest in abstraction and representation, or how to make a painting of something you can’t quite grasp. Ultimately, Stieglitz and Richter show us that artists are always in conversation, influencing and responding to one another across time and mediums, inviting us to see the world in new ways.