Music—A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs, No. IV 1922

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph, "Music—A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs, No. IV" with a camera, sometime in the first half of the 20th century. Looking at the tones of grey here, like wet paint mixed on a cloudy day, I imagine Stieglitz looking up, composing, waiting, then *snap*. What was he thinking? Was he trying to catch a feeling that couldn’t be put into words, something in between one thought and another? I think he must have been chasing after something very particular that day. In that little gap, a burst of light, right there in the middle, is like one brushstroke, the key to the whole painting. Stieglitz was part of a conversation with painters, all trying to find new ways to show what it feels like to be alive. What he did there, he made painting with light.