Songs of the Sky D7 1923

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph, Songs of the Sky D7, using a camera and photographic paper; he’s reaching for something ephemeral, transient, like music, or emotion. Look closely, and you’ll notice the silvery gelatin, its subtle sheen. The tones are soft, gentle gradations of light and dark, like a charcoal drawing where the artist has painstakingly smudged the marks to create a seamless surface. The clouds themselves are soft, blurring at the edges, as if they might dissipate at any moment. It’s hard to get a sense of the surface, the photograph, as it dissolves into the image. Stieglitz was part of a generation of artists who were interested in capturing the essence of a subject, not just its appearance. In his project ‘Equivalents’ these cloudscapes represent emotional states. Think of Hilma af Klint who was trying to capture unseen worlds in her paintings around the same time. Maybe art can show us how to see beyond the surface, into the unseen realms that surround us.