View of Rooftops — Morton Schamberg, 1917

Morton Schamberg photographed View of Rooftops in 1917, looking down over New York from an elevated window. There are no people in it and nothing growing, only roofline, parapet and shadow arranged into what the Metropolitan Museum of Art describes as an almost wholly geometric order. Schamberg moved in the Stieglitz circle and absorbed Cubism early, and this is the cool, hard-edged end of that influence. It is the only print he ever made from the negative, and it belonged for years to his closest collaborator, Charles Sheeler. Schamberg died the following year in the influenza pandemic.

What it offers a wall is structure. Where most photography of this period went soft and atmospheric, this one is all edge and interval, closer to a drawing than a picture. It holds its own against clean lines, plaster and pale wood, and it rewards the kind of looking where you keep finding another rectangle.

Each piece is printed to order and stretched over a 1.25 inch solid wood frame, with the image continuing around the edges. It arrives ready to hang, no framing required, in two vertical sizes cut close to the proportions of the original print. The source file is an open-access reproduction of a photograph now in the public domain.

• Medium: matte canvas, stretched over a 1.25 inch solid wood frame
• Orientation: vertical
• Sizes: 16×20in, 24×30in
• Finish: monochrome reproduction, matte surface
• Hanging: arrives ready to hang, no frame required
• Artwork: Morton Schamberg, View of Rooftops, 1917, gelatin silver print
• Original held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ford Motor Company Collection
• Printed to order, shipped from the nearest production partner