For What Else It Is

Equivalents was a photographic concept and body of work developed by the godfather of modern photography, Alfred Stieglitz, around 1925, based on his series of abstract cloud photographs. New York Times art critic Andy Grundberg said that Equivalents offer an "existence of a reality behind and beyond that offered by the world of appearances. They are intended to function evocatively, like music, and they express a desire to leave behind the physical world. Emotion resides solely in form, they assert, not in the specifics of time and place."

Stieglitz’s successor protégé, the great Minor White, brought the concept of equivalents to the next generation of photographers, suggesting that “one should photograph things not only for what they are but also for what else they are”. White argued that all good photographs have an “expressive-evocative quality” and that “when a photograph is a mirror of the man, and the man is a mirror of the world, then Spirit might take over.”

These are lofty ideas and ideals for contemporary photographers to consider. One might even believe that conceptual equivalents is not something you can do with nature or natural landscapes. But these are useful tools that can help usher the photographer away from the mere recording of objective beauty and drive the artists toward finding the spirit, soul, or otherness of the subjects placed before the camera. These are concepts and tools I regularly embrace to turn what “seems barren into something deeply expressive” (Tomasz Trzebiatowski, FRAMES Magazine).

The next time you are composing a photograph, ask yourself what you can do to photograph the subject for what else it is.

* FRAMES Magazine recently shared my photographs and words via its Photosnack feature.