"Swirling Laundry"

gelatin silver print

as a famous poet wrote: " ,Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry!’ " (ink) on verso

Abstract creative drive is easily shown. The spectator can smell the fresh laundry. Barbara Morgan and Ralph Steiner are followsing the same target. Morgan through the body and Steiner through the wind.
(Fritz Simak)

In the late 1960s, Steiner moved to Vermont and devoted almost twenty years to photographing clouds. Clouds have always been of great interest to painters in art history. In photography, the subject is often associated with Alfred Stieglitz, who photographed clouds under the title Equivalents because he believed they spoke directly to the subconscious. Steiner similarly recognised the atmospheric potential of cloud formations, although he felt that the meaning of each image was far more volatile than his predecessor. Deliberately leaving his works untitled, he invited viewers to let their imaginations run wild and come up with their own titles, which he said became a process of trying out different descriptions and metaphors. In 1985, shortly before his death, Steiner published a book of these studies, In Pursuit of Clouds.
The airy fluttering of laundry on the line could also be compared to the lightness of a cloud.
(Christoph Fuchs, 2021)

The note on the back refers to a poem by Richard Wilbur
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
                     Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
    Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,   
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.   
Now they are rising together in calm swells   
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear   
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;
    Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving   
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden   
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
                                             The soul shrinks
    From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
               “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,   
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”
    Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,   
The soul descends once more in bitter love   
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,   
    “Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;   
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,   
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating   
Of dark habits,
                      keeping their difficult balance.”