From the Back-Window—291 1915

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph, "From the Back-Window—291", using gelatin silver. It’s got that ghostly grayness of early photography; those blacks that aren’t really black, and whites that aren’t quite white. Imagine Stieglitz, peering out of his window. What was he thinking? Was he struck by the sheer verticality of New York, the way buildings claw at the sky? Or maybe it’s about framing, composing a picture out of the everyday chaos of the city. It reminds me a little bit of some of Edward Hopper's urban scenes, that same sense of loneliness. The texture is interesting here. You’ve got the soft blur of the out-of-focus trees versus the hard edges of the buildings. It’s a simple photograph, but Stieglitz found poetry in the ordinary. He must have been looking at all those other artists making work and he was trying to add something new to the mix. That's what art is all about, right? A big conversation.