From the Back Window – 291

From the Back Window – 291 is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1915.

[1] The night photograph depicts an urban cityscape of New York.

The reigning darkness is leavened by several sources of artificial light.

[2][3] Stieglitz seems to have taken inspiration from a recent exhibition of Cubist painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque at the 291 gallery, which would explain his interest in the geometrical forms and lines, but also of the 19th century photographers, like David Octavius Hill.

I know nothing outside of Hill’s work which I think is so direct, and quite so intensely honest.”[4] The picture also seems still reminiscent of pictorialism, while being more in the straight photography style.