My Skysong portfolios were inspired by the Equivalents series by Alfred Stieglitz (which had an original name of Songs of the Sky) in the 1920′s and 1930′s. Stieglitz photographed clouds for the form and beauty, creating masterful and dark black & white abstracts of clouds. About his Equivalents series, Stieglitz commented:

“I wanted to photograph clouds to find out what I had learned in forty years about photography. Through clouds to put down my philosophy of life – to show that (the success of) my photographs (was) not due to subject matter – not to special trees or faces, or interiors, to special privileges – clouds were there for everyone…”

Stieglitz moved away from the reference to the landscape and asked viewers instead to respond to the abstract forms, attempting to capture his own emotional reactions in the images. These photographs are considered one of the first major abstract bodies of work and were hugely influential on the history of photography.

Stieglitz’s work has been heavily influential to me as well, and I consider this body of work an homage to his contributions. For these portfolios, I chose photographs that reminded me of music, whether it be graphical forms reminiscent of sheet music or notes, or images that simply speak to me through music.