Equivalent

Alfred Stieglitz

1925 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Beginning in 1922, and then from 1923 to 1934, Stieglitz pointed his lens toward the clouds above Lake George, New York. He eventually made more than two hundred photographs in the series he initially called Songs of the Sky and later Equivalents. In these purposely disorienting and nearly abstract images, Stieglitz sought to arouse in the viewer the emotional equivalent of his own state of mind at the time he took the picture and to show that the content of a photograph was different from its subject. The Equivalents trace Stieglitz’s emotional response to nature through periods of ecstasy and darkness, romantic engagement, and confronting mortality.

Artist

Alfred Stieglitz

Date

1925

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1928