Songs of the Sky M4
1923
Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
sheet (trimmed to image): 11.5 x 9.1 cm (4 1/2 x 3 9/16 in.) mount: 34.3 x 27.5 cm (13 1/2 x 10 13/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Alfred Stieglitz Collection
Accession Number
1949.3.1119
Art Historical Context
Alfred Stieglitz's *Songs of the Sky M* (1923) captures the ethereal beauty of clouds in a small yet profound gelatin silver print, measuring just 11.5 x 9.1 cm on its trimmed sheet. As a pioneering figure in American photography, Stieglitz championed the medium as fine art through his Photo-Secession movement and Gallery 291 in New York. By the 1920s, he had shifted toward abstraction, creating his seminal "ivalents" series—cloud like this one that transcend literal depiction to evoke deep emotional resonances, much like music. Printed in gelatin silver, a process yielding crisp tonal gradat...
About the Artist
Alfred Stieglitz · 1864–1946
Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was a pioneering American photographer, art dealer, publisher, and advocate for the Modernist movement who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to German Jewish immigrant parents, Stieglitz spent his formative years studying mechanical engineering in Berlin, where he discovered photography in ...