Equivalent O2 1929

Editor: Here we have Alfred Stieglitz’s "Equivalent O2," taken in 1929. It’s a black and white photograph that looks, at first glance, like a really dramatic landscape... though something about it feels both calming and vaguely ominous at the same time. What do you see in this piece? Curator: Ominous... yes, I feel that too! The high contrast certainly contributes, wouldn't you agree? But I wonder if it's not just that, but also a deeper meditation. Stieglitz, see, aimed to capture inner states. He believed that a photograph of clouds could express something beyond just weather. What if these swirling masses represent feelings, anxieties, fleeting thoughts? Perhaps it captures a storm brewing within. Editor: Oh, that’s interesting. I was so focused on the visual aspect, I hadn’t really considered the emotional side of it. So, he was using nature to represent something else entirely? Curator: Precisely! He called them “equivalents,” these cloud photos. He hoped they’d evoke emotional responses in viewers divorced from the literal depiction. In a sense, he was after a pure form of visual music, or poetry. Stripped bare, emotions made tangible. Editor: So, like an abstract expressionist painting, but with photography? A really early example of that kind of thing in photography, maybe? Curator: You’ve got it! He's nudging photography away from simply documenting reality. These pictures, as far as he’s concerned, can carry profound, subjective meaning. That’s revolutionary thinking for the time, no? Editor: Absolutely! I always thought of him as a documentarian, but this gives me a whole new perspective. Thanks for making me think beyond the surface, and past that initial mood! Curator: My pleasure entirely. The clouds, like our emotions, are never quite what they seem.