This a sketch. I don’t think its quite there yet, but I like the general idea. A little nervous about the Ernie Gehr reference…

For April’s Steel City Suppositions, these drawings began to explore imaginations for Pittsburgh’s city steps.

Ascending Projections, 2010

The opening on Friday night was great! Everyone seemed to have a good time, and I received alot of useful feedback. I’m always impressed with how varied everyone’s reactions are and how useful their input always seems to be. I think the fact the photos create such a visceral reaction makes them easy to relate to while engaging everyone’s imagination.

I had good conversations with a few people about the spatial impressions you typically receive from a photograph, as well as the various factors that add up to creating the more successful images. Colors and textures are just as influential as the spatial condition is to creating the final result. Its interesting how different the resultant effects are when the movements between the images are so similar.

Here are a few set up shots:

And more opening:

I have an upcoming show March 5 at 6-9pm at Edge Studio’s gallery. Its part of Penn Avenue’s Unblurred event, hopefully you can make it out!

Download postcard! [PDF]

I spent more time recently refining the technical process of generating these images. A lot of images have often had various unintended objects or spaces pop in between two frames. By specifically measuring the heights, angles, and distances in a controlled space I can focus on the technical aspects of generating images. Here is the newest series, with explanatory poster, which refines this process.

Poster:

Printed!

The set up:

In other news, I sold my first print:

I was always a bit apprehensive about using a frame, but I’m really pleased with how the frame, if anything, enhances the image. I’ve been putting the two inch white border on the images for awhile now, since they create a space for the image to sit within. I think the frame allows this space to separate itself from whatever the context is; and hey, its a pretty nice frame.

I finally saw some daguerrotypes. Some new, some old, all incredible.

Depending on the angle from which you look at the metal surface, the image inverses the values of light and dark. Straight on and from the side is a totally different image. When you move from the side to a frontal view, the best part of the daguerreotype happens. As you move. the switch from negative to positive light values makes the image appear three dimensional, in a quasi holographic way.

Boulevard du Temple, Paris, 1838, by Daguerre. The first photograph of a person

Also, the reflections off of the metal surface of the museum’s lights generate incredible projections onto the floor. Obviously these physical characteristics are very difficult to understand from images on the screen, so you should go try to see some. It is unfortunately not okay to photograph at the museum, so my plan is to eventually produce some somehow.

Dagguerreotype, Elizabeth Raymer Griffin

The potential to both allude to three dimensional space and impose into the space in which the photograph is contained sounds really interesting. Do I hear diptych multiexposure daguerreotypes? Is that even possible?

Photography has a clear relationship to architecture: the documentation of space for those who are unable to experience it. It provides an opportunity for people to understand the physical relationships of a certain situation. Its use allows architects to publish their work, for news agencies to inform the public, and for google to document the world. Slowly, the physicality of the world is collected in images and stored in databases, accessible to everyone.

Backwards and forwards.

Architects rely on representational forms of art to design. Drawings, models, virtual reality, and photography enable viewers to understand architecture they cannot experience. The architecture lives in an imagined arena manifested by each representation. Viewers piece together this information and create their own imagination of the architecture. Each medium creates a different understanding of the architecture that another medium cannot give. None of the mediums, however, allow a viewer to understand the architecture as an experienced reality. More interestingly, the experienced architecture will not tell you what a drawing or photograph can tell you.

Each medium edits reality and displays the most pertinent information that the medium can explain. A plan of a building allows us to understand the circulatory relationships between spaces, their various sizes, etc. A plan, however, cannot help us to experience to the architecture, it enables us to understand a holistic interpretation of various aspects of the architecture. A plan is important, however, because experiencing architecture will not make such relationships obvious.

These images are both inside and outside.

Photography, on the other hand, can only document the reality of the world, not our imagined proposals for it. In architecture, photography comes after the fact, once the design (the imagination phase) is complete. It is used to document the product and to inform people about the architecture.

A house in Mongolia is not important unless it has been photographed. This same house in Mongolia need not be visited if it can be seen in a photograph. The house has become important because of the photograph, but at the same time the photograph denies the importance of experiencing the house. The photograph of the house is more important than the architecture of the house.

These are dark.

I think it is important for architects to challenge photography’s assertion over the reality of architecture. The process of creating a photograph alters reality. A few examples include the altered perception of time, the flattening of space into two dimensions, viewing the world from a single viewpoint, and the distortion the camera lens creates. These are aspects, among many others, that separate the medium of photography from the reality it represents.

These are also the aspects which make photography an interesting medium. I think it is interesting that unlike any other medium, photography begins with reality. It alters and distorts many spatial relationships, but it must always have the trace of the real located within its representation. Unlike drawing or painting, the essence of photography is its distorting relationship to the real world.