John Marin 1910

This gelatin silver print of John Marin by Alfred Stieglitz, now hanging in The Art Institute of Chicago, feels like a quiet moment, doesn't it? The way the light pools and then vanishes; it’s like watching a mood unfold. The photograph uses the subtle gradations of gray and the soft focus of the lens to shape your perception, to create a tonal landscape that feels both intimate and slightly obscured. Look at Marin’s hands; the fingers are elongated and almost ghostly, resting lightly as if barely connected to the solid mass of his coat and the chair beneath him. Then there's the dark space behind him, that arching abyss that could either be a wall or a void—it's uncertain. These are the spaces where we project our own questions, our own uncertainties. Like a painting by Man Ray, it's a conversation about how we look and what we see, and how those things change us in the process.