Once photographers could photograph clouds with relative
ease, they began to use them to enhance the natural drama of their landscapes. From
bright white to thundery black, clouds were a subject particularly well suited
to the long tonal range of the photogravure, a printing process that renders grayscale
with excellent fidelity.

Despite the rich subtlety of this photograph taken in
southern Germany, one critic derided Coburn’s print for its “gross
exaggerations of contrast.” A few years later, in 1912, Coburn illustrated a publication
of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous poem “The Cloud” (1820) with six sky-filled
landscapes. From a puffy cumulus to an ominous nimbus, Coburn’s variety of
cloud types visually echo Shelley’s Romantic poem, which is written from the
perspective of a continually reborn cloud: “I change, but I cannot die.”