Tree Set 3 c. 1924

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph, Tree Set 3, with paper and silver and all the alchemy that implies. I can imagine him outside, looking up, framing the shot, waiting for just the right light to make the tree a dark scrawl against the sky. It feels like a drawing, doesn’t it? Like a charcoal sketch. Except it's a photograph, so it's real in a different way. You know, I bet he’s thinking about how to make the tree graphic, but also how to capture the feeling of being alive, the feeling of the wind, the movement of the clouds. Look at the gesture of the branches, how they reach, how they tangle. There's something so simple about it, but it's also full of feeling. That dark tree against that big open sky; it's like a metaphor for everything. Stieglitz’s conversation with nature, with photography, echoes in my own relationship to painting. We’re all just trying to make sense of the world in our own way, to capture a moment, a feeling, something that’s hard to put into words.