Door to Kitchen, Lake George 1934

Alfred Stieglitz made "Door to Kitchen, Lake George," a photograph, at an unknown date. Isn't it amazing how Stieglitz coaxes so much out of simple black and white? The image is structured by horizontal lines, clapboard, roof shingles, even the slats in the screen door. Your eye is drawn into the depths of the opening, the flat, grey space under the little porch roof. Look how the details of the inside door seem to dissolve in shadow. Then, the whiteness of the outer walls are contrasted against the darkness of the doorway. It's about light and shadow, but also about texture. The rough surface of the shingles, the smooth, flat planes of the walls. It is a study of formal relationships, which is what photography does so well. Think of Walker Evans, another photographer who finds poetry in the everyday. Both find meaning in the mundane, elevating the ordinary to the extraordinary through careful observation and composition.