Doylestown House--Stairwell 1917

Charles Sheeler made this gelatin silver print of a stairwell in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. It’s almost like he’s cropped a painting out of real life—or maybe a painting out of other photos. I wonder what he was thinking about when he made it? There’s a real tension between abstraction and representation. The geometry of the stairs, the frame of the doorway, all these lines receding. The tonal range is tight. It feels like a private world, an everyday scene made into something more. The light itself seems thick, like paint! In a way, a photograph is just as tactile as a painting. These forms almost seem to have a life of their own—a kind of visual music. Sheeler’s got me thinking about the way one artist sees through another’s eyes. We all borrow and steal, but it's more like a conversation, a passing of notes. We look, we respond, and maybe, just maybe, we push things along a little further down the road.