Hopper was known as a brilliant printmaker long before he achieved any success as a painter; it was in his shadowy prints that he worked out for the first time some of the obsessive themes of his later cityscapes. While Hopper deliberately avoided the epic subjects of urban life—the skyscrapers and bridges of New York, as painted by Georgia O'Keeffe or Joseph Stella—he liked the plunging perspective that the tall buildings and elevated trains provided. In Night Shadows, one of his most haunting etchings, he juxtaposes a single nocturnal walker with the massive masonry he loved. The turn around the corner into some dark unknown region became a trademark image for Hopper's later paintings.