Equivalent 1925

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph, Equivalent, using gelatin silver. Look at how Stieglitz captures these clouds. I mean, he really gets the infinite shades of gray and how they blend and separate. It’s like a painter using a really restrained palette, but still managing to evoke so much depth. The way the light hits those clouds at the top right, it’s almost like they’re breathing, expanding into the darkness. I love how the texture becomes everything. It’s not just about seeing clouds; it’s about feeling them, their weight, their ethereality. The bottom left is so dense. It’s almost like he’s pushing the limits of what the medium can do, flirting with abstraction. It’s like he’s saying, hey, photography can be as expressive and internal as any painting. This reminds me a lot of Gerhard Richter's cloud paintings, they're clearly two different media, but there's that shared interest in the atmospheric and the sublime. For both of them, it’s not just about what you see, but how you see it.