Grass and Frost 1934

Alfred Stieglitz created this gelatin silver print called 'Grass and Frost', sometime in the early 20th century. It’s a photo of grass, seen close up, from a low vantage point. It’s interesting to consider Stieglitz standing there with his camera, trying to capture this scene. Did he notice how the frost made the grass appear sharp? How the shadow adds a sense of depth? You can see how he has framed the grass, with its variations in texture and tone, as if it were a landscape. It reminds me a little of some of Gerhard Richter's landscape paintings. With photography or painting, you start with the real world but the work becomes something else. You can just be in your studio, but then you think, what would it be like to be there? What would it be like to see that? The work is never really finished. It keeps changing as you make it.