Back of Little House 1934

This is Alfred Stieglitz’s "Back of Little House," a photograph where he's looking at a house, or the back of one, through a camera lens. You know, photography, like painting, is all about process. What grabs me here is the texture. Look at the weathered shingles on the roof, how they create this pattern that’s both regular and totally irregular. And then there are the trees, all scratchy and thin, reaching up. It's like a drawing, but with light and shadow. The surface feels so tactile, almost like you could touch the roughness of the wood and the sky, but it's all an illusion, of course. The eye wanders, trying to take it all in. Think about the whole history of landscape art, from the Hudson River School to right now. Artists are always trying to find new ways to frame our relationship to nature, like maybe a certain German couple I'm reminded of who photographed water towers. Stieglitz is part of that ongoing conversation, showing us how to look, how to feel, how to see the world anew.