Excavating, New York Possibly 1911 - 1932

Curator: Alfred Stieglitz’s gelatin-silver print, "Excavating, New York," likely created sometime between 1911 and 1932, presents us with a slice of urban labor. What strikes you about it? Editor: It's a powerful image; almost biblical. The monochrome palette creates this somber, timeless quality, despite it capturing such a modern industrial scene. The stark contrast reminds me of the monumental scale of labor and the transformation of the city. Curator: I see it similarly. The interplay between manual and mechanical labor is front and center. Notice how the horses, yoked to carts, are juxtaposed with the steam shovel, both integral to the process. Stieglitz really highlights the grit of construction – the physical toil, the earth being moved – which connects deeply with Ashcan realism's focus on everyday life. Editor: Absolutely. The composition directs the eye toward the men operating the machinery and tending the horses, obscuring the emerging structures that their efforts will produce. The steam, smoke, and dust serve to emphasize the relentless, all-consuming nature of industrialization itself—almost a symbolic offering to a new, metallic god. Curator: It speaks to how we’re literally and metaphorically building something, but at what cost? How are traditional work methods being reshaped by industrial tools? I'm particularly drawn to how the very medium of gelatin silver print serves his commentary; an industrial, reproducible process itself documenting industrial development. Editor: And the figures! They appear almost secondary, dwarfed by the equipment, underscoring a shifting societal hierarchy. They become anonymous components of this massive undertaking, each laboring under the shadow of progress – one wonders what sort of iconography will endure from this excavation. Curator: Stieglitz forces us to confront this transformation of labor through technology. I'm left pondering how these specific materials – film, earth, steel – reveal much larger societal shifts about the evolving character of work itself and, indeed, how the land will reflect those values. Editor: This image is like a visual time capsule – these laborers building a new world without fully seeing what their labor means in the grand symbolic context. It is less a snapshot of a city being built and more the revelation of modern society, where people were excavating progress even when shrouded in dirt and steam.