Cloud-Gazing

Cloudscape #1
copyright: charles kenwright/ http://www.openmind-images.com

The fascination of cloud-gazing is similar to fire-gazing, shapes come and go, forms appear, change, combine and separate. This fascination is, in my opinion, a basic part of man´s psyche and maybe it was this ability and love of cloud-gazing that stimulated him to create art in the first place.

Clouds have also fascinated other photographers. The great photographer, Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), created a series of cloud-scapes which he called Equivalents.

“After 1922 Stieglitz used the word “Equivalents” to describe his photographs of clouds, his Songs of the Skies, his Songs of Trees. He said ” My cloud photographs are equivalents of my most profound experiences, my basic philosophy of life.” In time he claimed that all his prints are equivalents; finally that all art is an equivalent of the artists´s most profound experience of Life”. Dorothy Norman, Aperture Masters of Photography Series