Poplars—Lake George 1932

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph, Poplars—Lake George, with a camera and film sometime in his life, no specific date has been given. Look at how Stieglitz lets the light fall; it's not just about what's in focus, but how those grays and blacks sit together. You could say the tonal range is his color palette here. The way those branches reach up, intertwining, reminds me of the frantic energy in some of Egon Schiele’s drawings. What grabs me is how the light reveals the texture, like the bark is almost touchable. It’s this balance between detail and abstraction that's so compelling. There's a mark that zigzags, a strange diagonal line near the bottom right. It's like a signature, not of the artist, but of the light itself, a fleeting moment caught in silver. Like his cloud studies, Stieglitz uses a specific motif to explore abstraction, but there is always an emotional narrative. It’s like he's saying, "Hey, look at this, feel this, think about this."