Songs of the Sky 1923

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph, a gelatin silver print, probably in the early 1920s. He called it "Songs of the Sky." I can imagine Stieglitz out there, looking up, pointing his camera at the sky, trying to capture the fleeting clouds. What a beautiful and kind of crazy thing to do. It’s almost funny, but there’s something so earnest about it. You can see why he called it "Songs of the Sky," like he’s trying to catch the music of the clouds. It reminds me a bit of some of Gerhard Richter’s cloud paintings – that same sense of trying to hold onto something that’s always changing, always moving. Artists are always trying to nail the un-nail-able, aren't they? It's a conversation across time, this grappling with light and form. And it’s never really about capturing reality, but more about feeling it, and sharing that feeling.