Marie J. Rapp 1915

This is Alfred Stieglitz’s photograph of Marie J. Rapp, and it’s a small silver gelatin print. Look how the tones shift and the greys deepen. You can almost feel the patience in Stieglitz’s darkroom, waiting to see the image emerge. Photography’s a bit like painting – a process of emergence through layering. The fuzziness of her fur hat and collar soften her features. What was she thinking as she posed? Did she know she would be immortalized in this quiet, contemplative way? Stieglitz was into capturing the essence of his subjects, and this photograph is so painterly, so in keeping with the portraits of the time, but it’s also of its own time. You think of someone like Alice Neel and her interest in the emotional life of the sitter. It's as if Stieglitz wanted to bring out an inner emotional state through the tonal range. There’s such an exchange happening across art history between painters and photographers, each inspiring new ways of seeing and feeling.