From My Window at the Shelton, North 1930 - 1931

Alfred Stieglitz made this photograph from his window at the Shelton Hotel using a camera, a darkroom, and all that alchemy. What really grabs me here is the texture of the sky versus the building; the clouds are soft and billowy, while the Shelton Hotel is solid geometry and right angles. Look at the top of the building where the scaffolding is, though. It’s like the top of the building is dissolving into the atmosphere, kind of rough, like a Cy Twombly sculpture. Stieglitz took so many photographs of clouds. He called them “equivalents,” because he was interested in how photography could express inner states of feeling. Like painting, photography can be about the world, but also about the interior life of the artist. And the Shelton Hotel is a funny kind of equivalent, something in-between the softness of the clouds and the hardness of the steel. There’s no one way to read it.