Alfred Stieglitz, Icy Night, 1893
The photographer of the original photograph, Alfred Stieglitz, was born into a large family in Hoboken, New Jersey on January 1, 1864. His family moved to Germany in 1881 and Stieglitz began studying medical engineering in Berlin. After taking a photochemistry course with Dr. Hermann Wilhelm Vogel (who quite possibly is related to me), Stieglitz switched his focus to photography and it became his passion. His photographic work emphasis the role of light, shadows and reinterpreting urban settings. The photography created by Stieglitz paved the way for photography to be considered as an art form. He married the famous painter Georgia O'Keeffe in 1924. He died in New York on July 13,1946.
In 1893, Stieglitz captured the photograph (above) which he entitled Icy Night. This photograph refines a simple picture of a winter setting and captures an eerie art form by contrasting the dark tips of the trees, the shockingly bright faces of the trees, and the distant fog of life and light. I believe he is standing under a light post when he took this picture, so the light is shed on the face of the trees and emphases the darkness of the night. When I first looked at the image, I didn't understand the photograph. It looked like someone walked outside and took a picture of some trees near a road. It took me about a day to really appreciate the picture when I started attempting to recreate the photograph. After a while, I started to appreciate the photograph as art and not just as a picture of the night. The photograph does an amazing job of showing the beauty of contrast, light amidst the dark, mother nature (snow) and the presence of human life (the lights in the distance) amongst the dying trees.
My idea behind the recreation was to flip the photograph Stieglitz had created. Instead of working with the darkness of night, I wanted to try to capture yet reinterpret his photograph in the brightness of day. Instead of trying to reveal light during the night, I wanted to capture the darkness of daylight. The photograph shows deep contrast between the trees and the white snow on top of the river. Sunlight reflects off of the tiny sliver of water visible on the pond and creates an abstract reflection of the trees. I tried to express the eerie presence of life by capturing the water visible through the winter ice, similar to Stieglitz's photograph which shows the optimistic light in the distance contrasting to the haunting trees. The perspective of the photograph is from above on a bridge and not at eye level, like the original. It was a cloudy day, so there is not as much light as I hoped to reflect off the water, but the clouds created a foggy relection, which I feel recreates Stieglitz's foggy lights in the distance.
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