Passing Through

There is an idea of movement in both Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi  and Joel Sternfeld’s Oxbow Archive that I find compelling . Sleeping by the Mississippi  references this majestic body of water deep with historical references and literary narrative winding its way through the Midwest. The feeling  of power and visceral movement which sweeps with it through Soth’s home town proved an allure too difficult to resist. We rarely see the river in the body of work, however the feeling of transience and transition is tangible in the images; as the river moves, we move. The youthful endeavour of Alec Soth - characterized in the Hucklberry Finn tale of boyhood wandering - to follow this boisterous river and photograph the places and people that inhabit its shores is easily juxtaposed against the maturity and restraint of Sternfeld’s Oxbow Archive.

It is useful to think of the river in a metaphorical sense - Soth’s  Mississippi  flowing with purpose and intent, eager to move on versus the idea of the ox bow lake - a result of a settling of sediment and erosion over time, that turns inward on itself, detaching itself from the feverent flow of the river. Sternfeld embodies this sense of process and passage of time in this mature body of work. A master of social document through wandering himself - the sense of movement in the images is innate. The passing of seasons and the changes it brings are frozen in time to produce a social document of a different kind.  

With both Sleeping by the Mississippi and Oxbow Archive exhibiting an idea of movement, it is interesting to explore the role the 8x10 view camera plays in this. The use of an unwieldy view camera feels decidely counter-intuitive to the idea of capturing images while roaming the landscape. Soth claims the 8x10 made the process of wandering and meeting people less ‘predatory’ as he often left the view camera in his car and sets off with an open mind. In this way the limits of the view camera, in that it is cumbersome, pedantic and labour intensive to set up, releases something in the photographer. To limit one freedom is to release another. Liberated from the urge to capture a feverent twenty frames per minute it allows the photographer to look, and to really see.

One can imagine the rigorous process of ‘setting up’ the view camera as a ritual of sorts – a solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order. Patience and diligence exhibited in the process of manually setting up the camera are again shown in the process of setting up the image. To undertake this lengthy process also displays a personal confidence in the image they are about to capture - a worthiness. The view camera with all its intricacies and limitations, and the notoriously complex focusing process, serves to slow down the photographer to really evaluate the image they are about to capture. Seeing the image slowly registering on the ground glass - albeit upside down and back to front -seems to me another ritual which couldn't but help to sustain a photographers affection for the medium. When Soth speaks about the view camera, with all its quirks and limitations, there is an overwhelming sense of respect and affection. His description of the image appearing on the ground glass as ‘jewel-like’ that is sometimes so beautiful he almost refrains from capturing the frame betrays a novelty and a fascination that the view camera would bring to every exposure. 

Soth claims that he is not the kind of photographer that waits around for the optimal lighting for a shot– and there is something about the necessity to keep moving which underpins Sleeping by the Mississippi that makes me believe this. But there is also an underlying sense of patience and tranquillity rooted in Sleeping by the Mississippi that conveys a sense of care and craft which the view camera demands. This idea of time or indeed urgency and the knowing of how long it takes to expose these images add to the depth of the photographs. The astounding depth of field in both Sternfeld’s Oxbow Archive and Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi is the obvious draw of the view camera but I also find the idea of time and compression of time into one image fascinating. In Sternfeld’s Oxbow  Archive - the culmination of an almost hermitic plight over  eighteen months - it is the clarity and detail of the images that captures our attention at first. But as one becomes drawn into the book it is the compression of time evident in his images that sustains us. The passage of time and the impact of the seasons on this unremarkable potato field is clearly an interest that sustained Sternfeld. It is interesting to view Sternfeld as the farmer of this field, gaining his sustenance from the working of the land. He came to know the land intimately - as meticulously in tune with the processes of the land and the weather as he was about the processes associated with the view camera. Capturing the changes of seasonality was driven by a sense of urgency, a sense of the expiration of the image. This is the last time we will see the landscapes quite like this. This, the inevitable ending of things, captured with a quiet dignity and restraint. Sternfeld visited this site on his previous wanderings for American Prospects, but his return marks a more mature piece work - the pace is different.  The inclusion of the map at the end of the book signals that he wants us to relate, to imagine that we too could return to these places captures in his photographs, although always with a knowing that these exact images will never truly be seen again.

Essay: Constructing the View.

Now that the dust is settling on the symposium, it's time to write about some of the themes that have come up in our discussions preparing for and after it.
To complete the seminar, each student will write a 3,000 -3,500 word essay to be submitted in print  (formatted and designed to suit the subject matter, as a booklet) and soft copy as pdf by 1pm on December 16th.
The title of the essay is 'Constructing the View'. In it, each student will explore an aspect of what photography can offer architecture.
The first draft of 1,000 words with selected images is due to be published on the blog by each student by the end of the day on 23rd November.

Here are four ideas about photography that have come up in discussions that may help you develop the course of your essay this week.

1) Photography as a way of knowing the world.
When writing about his exhibition at MOMA, 'New Documents', Szarkowski describes the work of the photographers in the exhibition: (Arbus, Friedlander and Winogrand): 'Their aim has been not to reform life, but to know it, not to persuade, but to understand. The world, in spite of its terrors, is approached as the ultimate source of wonder and fascination, no less precious for being irrational and incoherent...' (see full press release here).

There is also a great documentary on Winogrand at work available partly on youtube:




2) Form and Pressure
In this essay (full text here), Shore discusses a quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet in relation to his understanding of photography:
'but then there is this final line: "[To show] the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." This is within the realm of photography. A photograph can aspire to this.'

You can listen to Shore discuss how he makes his photographs  and watch him at work here:



You can also listen to a lecture he gave for the Architectural Association in London by following this link: Photography and the Limits of Representation - Stephen Shore, The Photographer's Gallery London, 13/10/2010/

3) Photography as a way of being in the world:
In the first session of the symposium, 'Lived Space', Mark Pimlott spoke about why he takes photographs 'in this perpetually unfolding present':
'I make photographs as a kind of necessity: I want to be in the World, I want to be open to its expressions.' He quotes Shore:
'And so the pictures are reflective of the condition of a self, paying attention'.
He goes on to say:
'More than documenting, or remembering, then, the photographic attention might serve to bind us to the World, regardless of whether that attention pertains to making or looking: constructing the view is constructing the bond between the self and the World.'

4) Photography as a way of representing an idea of built space - both before and after construction

'A great building, in my opinion, must begin with the unmeasurable, go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasurable.' - Louis Kahn

4a) The Vkhutemas School in 1920s Moscow, and the student exercises using models and photography.
This work was curated by Thomas Demand for the 2012 Architecture Biennale in Venice, and he exhibited these alongside his photographs of sketch models by John Lautner, a series entitled 'Model Studies' that was also exhibited at the Graham Foundation and is discussed here.

4b) Hélene Binet's lecture at Harvard: Composing Space:



4c) House: After 5 years of living by Charles & Ray Eames:

constructing the view_ the space between

the space between

 starting off with an image by candida hofer, that i have been studying from the start of the term, that illustrates clearly to the viewer an object centred in the layers of the image being taken. the space that i am intrigued is the in between space_ the social surrounding_ to whom ground belongs. The chair is also significant as it makes use of a basic essential in urban life, revealing its symbolic power in relation to the life of the city.

 a photo by michael wolf from his project 'bastard chairs', where the chairs photographed in this series have been patched up, reconfigured, often repaired dozens of times. they give the viewer an idea of the creativity and devotion to maximum productivity in the Chinese culture. they provide an insight into the lives of the owners of these chairs- their personality, their celebration of intelligence_ it becomes a detailed portrait of these people. in these photos the chair is also emphasized by its surrounding in between space and creates the viewer to look around and beyond the chair itself.

another image from michael wolf below of a series called 100 x 100, in hong kong inside outside, wolf pairs the architectural abstractions of architecture of density, with 100×100, a study of one hundred interiors in one of hong kong’s oldest housing complexes. in drastic opposition to the distance and uniformity of wolf’s architectural photographs, these images have a quasi-journalistic style, where each photo is set up and taken with the same technique, and even though it feels like a portrait of the inhabitant of each space, it actually goes beyond that and develops into a portrait of these diverse spaces that each individual has created for themselves from the exact same dimensional room.

questions that i want to research on.

How? are these spaces created

Are? they suggessful

What? are they trying to show

Constructing Reality

Photography has been long regarded as a tool to document the world. It captures the truth and only the truth. It captures what is real. But for photography as an art form, reality as it is might not be enough. It needs to be constructed, in a way that delivers the photographer’s own reality.  The result is a surrealistic view that cemented photography’s place in the art world.

When talking about surrealism in photography, the first name that comes up would be Man Ray. He carefully “constructed the view” so that a photograph became a work of art. He used his camera to capture ideas, not facts.

Alexander Rodchenko also bent the rules of photography. Although he is well-known for his photomontages, his photographs also bring a unique perspective, literally. Using a handheld camera, he could take pictures that might have just come from the realm of imagination.

Years later, this idea of “constructing reality” breathes a life of its own. In Tokyo Compression, Michael Wolf constructed his photographs as a window to a person’s soul. They feel real and surreal at the same time, terrifyingly taking us to the barrier between imagination and reality.

As architects, we also often dwell in this line between what is real and what is imagined. Throughout the design process, we put an imaginary building on a real context. We can learn how to navigate ourselves in this process by studying these photographs so that we do not become lost in either dream or reality. 

HOW does a photographer construct the view?

From the work we produced for the mini movie "Constructing the View" we tried to decompose and recompose the photos to illustrate and highlight what we loved about those pictures and what made them so powerful - the sky's reflection in the car's ceiling, the movement of characters and objects, the hat, etc. The Winogrand sketch we did puts the viewer in the place of Winogrand exactly at the moment when the people walking towards him are framed by the business man to the left and the man looking straight at the camera to the right, exactly when he decide to take the picture.

 Gary Winogrand - New York - 1968

My idea is to continue the process we started through the film about how and what the photographer implemented to capture a great photo. 

Time: What did he think at the time? Was it carefully prepared in advance of the picture being taken or was it thanks to "the decisive moment" Henri Cartier-Bresson talks about?

 Henri Cartier-Bresson - Derrière la Gare Saint-Lazare - Paris - 1932

Composition: How much do you keep in the frame how much do you have in focus? What does he want to highlight? How does he construct, through porportions, objectivity or flatness? What made him select a certain frame from another?

The Mental Level: How the photographer through is art impacts on the viewer's impressions and emotions? What he leaves out of the frame for the imagination? What are the photographer's intention when taking the picture?

Michael Woolf - Tokyo Compression 75 - Tokyo - 2010

I base the structure of my anlysis on sub-titles seen through the semester but to look more carefully at the photographer's process. Photographers have multiple methods and tools to create impact on the viewer. I want to research what decisions were made and what approach were taken to create Art through photography.

Looking Through A Bigger Camera

The photographer Alec Soth using an 8-by-10 film camera.

Photographers usually start off with a small format camera, 35 mm, then acquire more lenses moving towards the medium format. What happens when you move to the large format view camera? How as a photographer is your 'seeing' of the world changed? Do you become more considerate of the image you will produce or are you simply just looking for a better quality of photo at a larger scale?

With the large format the photographer carries the heavy equipment to site. Then takes precious time to set up the camera. Looking under a black cloak at an inverted image the scene is considered. The image is not instant as a digital will be. The ground glass shows you a preview of the image but its not final. The photographer judges what exposure is right and waits for 'the decisive moment' (Cartier-Bresson).

Stephen Shore in 'Uncommon Places'  was, at first intention, attempting to recapture 'American Surfaces' only this time in full colour and with better equipment. Yet he almost immediately found that this new equipment forced him to carry out his process in a different way.

"The view camera forces conscious decision making. You can't sort of stand somewhere, it is exactly where you want to be... So what happens is that you develop a kind of taste for certainty'.

Stephen Shore - Main Street, Gull Lake, Saskatchewan, August 18, 1974

Edward Burtynsky in Manufactured Landscapes tells in an interview how it slowed him down, made him methodical in his study and search for the image. How he sees himself in the final image.

"It's a contemplative approach. You find your way to the image slowly. ...I looked upon the ground glass the same way you might look at a blank canvas - a space to be filled. The beauty of it was that it filled so quickly and with such exquisite detail."

Ansel Adams in 'The Camera' suggests this contemplative nature of the view camera. he also comments on the way in which you take the photo. Like the opening image of Alec Soth the photographer can be in isolation from the world around him while giving complete attention to the image in front of him.

"With a smaller camera we see the subject through
a viewfinder, and release the shutter at the desired moment of exposure.
A view camera favors a far more contemplative approach,
partly because it is slower to operate... In addition
we see the image on a ground-glass screen that is in precisely the
same position the film will occupy when we are ready for exposure."

Ansel Adams - Yosemite Park

The detail a 4 x 5 or 8 x 10 format camera gives is the most impressive compared with medium format or 35 mm. Maybe this is why photographers move to a large format. Shore did this, he realised he didn't have to be as direct with what the subject was.

'Especially if I'm photographing an intersection, I don't have to have a single point of emphasis in the picture. It can be complex, because its so detailed that the viewer can take time and read it; they can pay attention to allot more.'

I want to investigate this affect, if indeed there is one, of the large format camera has on the psyche of the photographer. In an age where images are capture and instantly available is it a version of “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough” (Robert Capa) or is there still a place for the slow process of the 'Bigger Camera'.

Constructing the View

Photography is a funny one, on the face of it, the photographic plate or chip, indiscriminately captures and records light, leading it to assume a kind of scientific impartiality, a fixed record of the truth.

In reality, photography is anything but.

However, our willingness to believe in its impartiality has allowed people, organisations and governments, to selectively shoot and frame the world in photographs, which they present to the masses as infallible evidence of ‘the way things are’.  

You could almost accuse them of ‘constructing the view’…

And although photography has been instrumental in this practice, it also has a way of subverting this effort to manhandle the truth.

The highly turbulent politicised landscape of early 20^th Century Europe, the rise of authoritarianism in Germany and the USSR and threat to U.S.' dominance as an economic and military superpower, created a potent breeding ground where this grew and developed.

Aleksandr Rodchenko embraced of photography as a way of broadcasting his Soviet ideals and vision of Utopia to a fragile country. Later in life he was forced to cut, modify and censor his work at the behest of the Soviet government who were eager to create an image of the utopia which had failed to materialise.

Despite the apparent coldness of August Sanders' indiscriminate cataloguing of people, it revealed a nuanced humanity, threatening the absolutist concept of the master-race, that the Nazi party were eager to promote. Showing 'The hard fact of it and yet the elusive nature of details.'

In America, Walker Evans ran afoul of the Farm Security Administration who had commissioned him to produce propaganda pieces about the life of American sharecroppers. His work, laid bare  the fragility and humanity underpinning the American dream. 

It's interesting to note that Evans called the work ‘documentary-style photography’, the inclusion of the word style implying that, it simply appears to give us the facts, but there is more to it than that.

A more modern manifestation of this is the work of Jules Spinatsch. His series 'Temporary Discomfort' acts as a foil to the adage ‘If the photo isn’t good, you’re not close enough’.

Suggesting that a maintaining distance allows room for crucial objectivity, he photographs the security and . Turning his back to the action he produces unpopulated, contemplative images of the security apparatus surrounding world summits. A counter-point to the emotive crowded images, which appear in the world media following these events.

In his view, the sometimes tightly controlled, one-sided nature of photography in the mass media highlights the importance of examining the motivation behind the photograph’s rather than its content.

The huge democratisation of photography, camera's have become omnipresent, has raised the question the most interesting photography’s comes from the subjects, who are part of an event, rather than the photographers, who have been tasked with recording it. The images with the most impact on society are usually amateur photographs, and CCTV or camera-phone footage.