Georgia O'Keeffe at 291 1917

Alfred Stieglitz made this gelatin silver print, Georgia O'Keeffe at 291. Look at those swirls, like cream being stirred into coffee, around and around, not quite meeting in the middle. You can almost see the artist’s hand moving, the way he might have coaxed the image into being, slowly, bit by bit. I wonder if he was thinking about how to capture something of O’Keeffe's spirit, her own way of seeing the world. The light in this image feels so delicate. And then, there are the hands, resting there, they remind me of my own hands when I’m trying to figure something out in a painting. It's like Stieglitz is inviting us to consider the artist’s physical presence, her hands as tools, thinking, feeling. Maybe he was interested in the way we come to know ourselves, the messy, confusing, but ultimately beautiful process of becoming. Artists, we're all in this together, trying to make sense of the world.