Lake George c. 1926

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph, "Lake George", with a camera, obviously, and his secret sauce of mood. The sky dominates, thick with emotion, like a heavy thought you can't quite shake. You can almost feel the dampness, the weight of the clouds pressing down. It's all about tonality, this photo, the way the light teases out the textures of the clouds, hinting at the distant hills. Look at the way the branches of the tree claw at the sky. It’s a subtle detail, but it anchors the whole scene, a dark silhouette against the drama above. Think of the Hudson River School painters, but distilled, simplified, made modern through the lens. It makes me think of Gerhard Richter's cloud paintings, those blurry, almost-there images that capture the fleeting nature of perception itself. Like Richter, Stieglitz isn't just showing us a landscape; he's showing us how we feel in a landscape. It’s a conversation, this picture, about seeing, feeling, and the quiet power of observation.