“From the Window of 291, 1915”
The mystery of evening.
The ambiguity of urbanity.
Illumination within darkness.
Alfred Stieglitz’s “From the Back Window” is as much – is more – question, than photo.
Light glows, solid, through a solitary window, only yards away.
Light falls, muted, upon a balcony, nearby.
(And all else is still?)
Nearby buildings, interlock, overlap, intermingle; only visible ambiently, as angles, edges, and corners.
Even blacker than the empty sky: Walls, invisible.
Light emerges, from the windows in the far background. (Why? What’s happening within?)
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Evidently Stieglitz availed himself of this vantage point at least twice, as evidenced in the image below, which – though also taken at night – is oriented from a different angle and therefore captures another field of view. The obvious differences are the clothesline, and, the windows in the foreground apartments and the three high-rises in the distance. The photograph is titled “From the Back Window — “291” (1)”, and it’s from the online exhibition “ALFRED STIEGLITZ AND MODERN AMERICA – at MFA Boston”, of September 12, 2017, via What Will You Remember.
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The upper image was scanned from a postcard (ISBN 01-07477-2) printed by MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art) in 1992. Descriptive information on the card states: “Platinum print, 9 7/8″ x 7 15/16”, from “Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949, 49-55-35”.
The lower image is described in the Boston MFA’s caption similarly and simply, as a “platinum print, [with] artist-applied coating”.
