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[Music: A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs, No. 1]

Creator

American Photographer · 1864–1946

EditorAuthorArtist

Alfred Stieglitz's contribution to the history of photography extends far beyond his photographic work, which he began as a student in Germany in 1883. He influenced generations of photographers, painters, and sculptors both directly and indirectly. In 1905, with Edward Steichen, he founded the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York, which later became known simply

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Date: 1922
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Culture: American
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum

When Alfred Stieglitz began to photograph clouds, he wrote to a friend: "I had told Miss [Georgia] O'Keeffe I wanted a series of photographs which when seen by [composer] Ernest Bloch he would exclaim: Music! music! Man, why that is music!" In 1922, amidst significant personal changes, Stieglitz created his first series of cloud studies, alternately titled *Music: A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs;* *Clouds in Ten Movements;* and *Music: A Series of Ten Pictures*. These images were a precursor to Stieglitz's "Equivalents" series, in which he sought to depict emotional states through visual representations. This foreboding landscape with its dominating, brooding black sky evokes the personal, familial tumult then occurring in Stieglitz's life.

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