Architecture

Using exacting camera work, the photographers in this print viewing make highly detailed images of architecture to consider the human capacity to design, build and transform space. Students will be exposed to various camera techniques used, consider the transformative power of both architecture and photography, and contemplate how building styles reflect cultural values and desires. Additional works by the photographers featured here and others can be accessed from the MoCP website.

Artist: Todd Hido Title: Untitled, (#2214) Date: 2001 Medium: Chromogenic Development Print Dimensions: Frame: 21 1/8 in x 25 1/8 in Image: 19 5/8 in x 23 5/8 in Credit Line: Gift of the Artist & Carrie Secrist Gallery

Fortino, Scott American, b. 1952

A Chicago police officer for twenty-three years, Scott Fortino once thought of his job and his artwork as diametrically opposed. After returning to graduate school for photography in 1998, however, he realized that his uniform facilitated access to restricted places rich in photographic potential. In his photographs of institutional spaces, Fortino explores the psychology of confinement and protection. Observed with an almost clinical formality, his pictures of Chicago public school classrooms and police station holding cells, both highly structured and regimented environments normally filled to capacity, resonate through the absence of human presence. Fortino works with methodical precision. By selecting scenes in which fields of color and line flatten out space, he confines our attention to the interior details that the rooms’ occupants have left behind. Brightly colored walls and graffiti evidence attempts to reverse the deadening and leveling affects of the bland institutional environments, as well as the very human need to assert independence and individuality in the face of restriction and impersonality.

Title: Advocate’s Interview Room, Domestic Court Date: 2007 Medium: Inkjet Print Dimensions: Image: 14 in x 17 ½ in Paper: 16 in x 20 in Credit Line: Gift of the Artist

Title: Board Room, Wards Date: 2006 Medium: Inkjet Print Dimensions: Image: 13 5/8 in Paper: 16 in x 20 in Credit Line: Gift of the Artist

Hido, Todd American, b. 1968

Often compared to filmmaker David Lynch, Todd Hido creates eerie photographs in the landscape of contemporary suburbia. Devoid of people but nonetheless suggesting human presence, his color photographs are shot at dusk using only available light and possess a sense of uneasiness and have a voyeuristic quality. The above works, from his series "House Hunting," hint at the worlds of those inside the glowing houses but refrain from overtly depicting them. Instead, Hido places himself—and by extension the viewer—on the street, alone in the dark. His photographs, identified only by numbers, refrain from identifying specific locales, suggesting a widespread alienation in American life.

Title: Untitled, (#2214) Date: 2001 Medium: Chromogenic Development Print Dimensions: Frame: 21 1/8 in x 25 1/8 in Image: 19 5/8 in x 23 5/8 in Credit Line: Gift of the Artist & Carrie Secrist Gallery

Title: Untitled, (#2840) Date: 2001 Medium: Chromogenic Development Print Dimensions: Frame: 21 1/8 in x 25 1/8 in Image: 19 5/8 in x 23 5/8 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Ulrich, Brian American, b.1971 Northport, NY

For the past ten years, photographer Brian Ulrich has been examining the peculiarities and complexities of American consumer-driven culture. His long-term series Copia (Latin for “plenty”) is comprised of individual chapters--Retail, Thrift, and Dark Stores--each exploring a unique facet of economic class. From the dizzying Mall of America, to hyperreal Las Vegas, to countless fluorescent lit box stores across the Midwest, to the manic spectacle of shopping in New York City, Ulrich’s photographs uncover the economic, social, and political implications of commercialism and overconsumption. With the help of commercial real estate publications, Ulrich travels the country in search of dead and expiring malls, retail strips, and big-box stores such as those pictured in Future CompUSA and Best Thrift. His architectural photographs speak to the ideologies of the American ideal and the manufacture of desire.

Title: Future CompUSA Date: 2010 Medium: Digital Pigment Print Dimensions: Image: 18 ¼ in x 23 in Paper: 20 in x 24 in Credit Line: Gift of the Artist

Title: Best Thrift Date: 2010 Medium: Digital Pigment Print Dimensions: Image: 18 ¼ in x 23 in Paper: 20 in x 24 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Cartagena Gonzalez, Alejandro Mexican, b. 1977

In his series Suburbia Mexicana, Alejandro Cartagena documents the landscape and suburban sprawl in the metropolitan area of Monterrey, Mexico, the country’s third largest city and a vital economic hub. Suburbia Mexicana is comprised of five connected chapters representing different aspects and impacts of the continually expanding and often hastily built housing projects surrounding Monterrey. Fragmented Cities is the first chapter in the larger series, depicting densely packed, identical housing units stretching toward the surrounding mountains, while a later chapter in the series, Lost Rivers, depicts seemingly romantic landscapes with rivers and streams drying up due to Monterrey’s rapid population growth and demand for water. The negative human and environmental impacts of these housing projects are the result of government policies favoring decentralized cities, a general lack of urban planning, and disregard for sustainability in favor of quick financial profit. By photographing the particularly acute nature of suburban sprawl in Monterrey, Cartagena depicts, in his words, “a global issue from a local perspective.”

Title: Fragmented Cities, Escobedo Date: 2008 Medium: Inkjet Print Dimensions: Image: 16 in x 20 in Paper: 20 in x 24 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Title: Business in Newly Built Suburb in Juarez Date: 2009 Medium: Inkjet Print Dimensions: Image: 16 in x 20 in Paper: 20 in x 24 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Title: Fragmented Cities, Juarez Date: 2008 Medium: Inkjet Print Dimensions: Image: 16 in x 20 in Paper: 20 in x 24 in Credit Line: Gift of the Artist

Princen, Bas Dutch, b. 1975

Bas Princen's ongoing photographic series, “Utopian Debris,” depicts places that are reminiscent of avant-garde, utopian architecture projects. Princen's interest lies in engaging various ideas about architecture and landscape, however, and not in representing particular iconic buildings or historic moments. Trained as an architect and an urban planner, Princen approaches photography as a means to construct space rather than a recording device to document reality. In making a photograph Princen uses the camera to emphasize certain elements at a given site while consciously excluding others, in order to create new relationships between the buildings and the immediate world around them. Compared with how they would appear on location, his images deliberately, but subtly, alter the way we see these particular landscapes. The settings where Princen photographs, such as the "ring roads" at the edges of growing cities, are often removed from the common centers of human life, as if examining the outer ripples of the history of modern architecture. Although the titles of his pictures indicate where they were taken — locations ranging from northern Morocco to Los Angeles and Houston, Texas — the images have an otherworldly or mythical quality. Princen's technical choices, such as camera position and the time of day he chooses to shoot, play a significant role in creating a gentle sense of disorientation and an atmosphere of mystery. In the image Ring Road Houston (2005), for instance, Princen portrays a monumental gold office tower beside an empty parking lot, framed against a dull grey sky, but he makes the architecture enigmatically disappear. The reflections in the building's mirrored facades are perfectly aligned with the horizon so that they continue seamlessly into the highway and buildings behind it, complicating any sense of depth.

Title: Ringroad Findeq-Ceuta Date: 2007 Medium: Chromogenic Development Print Dimensions: 20 in x 24 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Title: Outskirts (Findeq) Date: 2005 Medium: Chromogenic Development Print Dimensions: 20 in x 24 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Title: Ringroad Houston Date: 2005 Medium: Chromogenic Development Print Dimensions: 20 in x 24 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Abbott, Berenice American, 1898-1991

Returning to the United States in 1929 after eight years in Europe, Berenice Abbott became fascinated with New York City and resolved to create an all-encompassing body of work documenting its many sides. After struggling with funding, Abbott was finally granted an allowance by the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. With an abstracted—and often graphic--grace, Abbott’s photographs demonstrate the face of a city on the brink of revolutionary change. Images of Modern skyscrapers are juxtaposed with the makeshift shelters constructed by the homeless in Central Park; for every beautiful example of architecture, there is another of human destitution.

Fourth Avenue No. 154, Brooklyn Date: 1936; Printed 1979 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Image: 15 ½ in x 19 ½ in Credit Line: Gift of Maxine & Lawrence Snider

Barclay Street Station, New York Date: 1930; Printed 1979 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Image: 15 ½ in x 19 ½ in Credit Line: Gift of Maxine & Lawrence Snider

Baltz, Lewis American, 1945-2014

Lewis Baltz documents the changing American landscape of the 1970s in his series, “New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California.” The project’s 51 pictures depict structural details, walls at mid-distance, offices, and parking lots of industrial parks. Contrast and geometry are important in these pictures, but what marks them as uniform is Baltz’s attention to surface texture and lifeless subject matter. Often displayed in a grid format, it is important to Baltz that his pictures be seen collectively as a group or series. The series format suits his desire that no one image be taken as more true or significant than another, encouraging the viewer to consider not just the pictures but everything outside of the frame as well, emphasizing the monotony of the man-made environment. The pictures themselves resist any single point of focus, framed as they are to present the scene as a whole without bringing attention to any particular element within. Shot with a 35mm lens on a 35mm camera (usually at eye level), and stopped down for maximum depth of field, Baltz chooses his materials for maximum clarity and precision. He takes care to title his pieces with specific information on each site’s location, so that viewers could return to the same exact place.

Title: New Industrial Parks #45 Date: 1974 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Image: 6 in x 9 in Paper: 8 in x 10 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Title: New Industrial Parks #40 Date: 1974 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Image: 6 in x 9 in Paper: 8 in x 10 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Title: New Industrial Parks #23 Date: 1974 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Image: 6 in x 9 in Paper: 8 in x 10 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Title: New Industrial Parks #10 Date: 1974 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Image: 6 in x 9 in Paper: 8 in x 10 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Hartt, David Canadian, b. 1967

David Hartt’s 2011 photographic series and video, Stray Light (2011), explore the interior of the Johnson Publishing Company Headquarters, where every corner hints at this site as an evolving expression of Black culture and modern aesthetics. Designed by John Moutoussamy in 1971, the headquarters are lauded as the first downtown Chicago building designed by an African-American architect. Moutoussamy collaborated with interior designer Arthur Elrod to make an environment reflective of the progressive vision of company founders, John H. Johnson and Eunice Johnson, who became national taste-makers with their popular magazines, Jet and Ebony. However cutting-edge these office spaces were in the seventies, Stray Light presents them as cultural artifacts. Golden and day-glow rooms, geometric patterned floors, and African-inspired sculptures render otherwise unremarkable cubicles exotic. As later additions, these industrial-looking cubicles evidence the merger between Elrod’s initial design and more recent styles. Hartt portrays this intermingling of the old and the new as a kind of spectacle. The video’s jazz-inspired soundtrack enlivens inanimate characters as the tempo slows with the rustling of bead curtains and later quickens when the kitchen’s psychedelic wallpaper appears. By casting the décor as theatrical and anthropological, Hartt’s footage evokes ways in which manmade structures resist and respond to changing times. Hartt often frames his lengthy shots behind obstacles, conveying the perspective of a prowler, and encouraging viewers to picture themselves peering over file-cabinets and potted plants along with the camera. This approach to navigating the headquarters emphasizes a gap between the Johnson Company community and Hartt’s outsider stance. As noted by many critics, the video’s title also insinuates that the artist’s presence is intrusive, like a “stray light” that unexpectedly enters a controlled environment. As such, the subjects in this environment do not make eye contact with the camera; the employees seem absorbed in work and at home in their eccentric settings. The video’s removed point of view calls to mind filmmaker Jacque Tati, whom Hartt admires for the way he used “qualities of architecture and geography as narrative devices.” Likewise, in Stray Light, the built-environment and its materials assume leading roles. Although a famous model of black leadership, the Johnson Publishing Company could not avoid the effects of a waning publishing industry. Only months after Hartt recorded its headquarters, the company sold its 820 Michigan Avenue building to Columbia College. In retrospect, Hartt’s documentation of these headquarters comes across as a tribute to the Johnsons’ vision as well as an inquiry into the future of their product and ideology.

Stray Light Date: 2011 Medium: DVD Duration: 12 minutes, 12 seconds Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Wolf, Michael German, b. 1954

In 2005 Michael Wolf visited Chicago for the first time to participate in a group exhibition for the Museum of Contemporary Photography. As he rode an elevated train from the airport into the city, he began to envision photographing Chicago. For the previous decade, Wolf had been living and working in Hong Kong, attempting to capture the sheer density of people living on the two small islands that make up that city. Wolf examined the endless ranks of residential housing complexes in Hong Kong by removing the horizon line and flattening the space to a relentless abstraction of urban expansion. He noticed, however, that Chicago had an entirely different feel. While Hong Kong is built of endless rows of structures designed and built in a nearly identical style, Chicago has more experimental, unique buildings of many different styles. In 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, in collaboration with the U.S. Equities Reality artist-in-residence program, invited Wolf to create his first body of work to address an American city. Chicago is known for work by innovative architects such as David Adler, Daniel Burnham, Louis H. Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright, and after World War II, it established itself as a world capital of modern architecture influenced by the international style of Mies van der Rohe and home to notable projects by Helmut Jahn, Philip Johnson, and more recently Frank Gehry. While it has been common for photographers to glorify Chicago’s distinctive architecture and environmental context, Wolf depicts the city more abstractly, focusing less on individual well-known structures and more on the contradictions and conflicts between architectural styles when visually flattened together in a photograph. His pictures look through the multiple layers of glass to reveal the social constructs of living and working in an urban environment, focusing specifically on voyeurism and the contemporary urban landscape in flux. Wolf explores the complex, sometimes blurred distinctions between private and public life in a city made transparent by his intense observation.

Title: The Transparent City 87A Date: 2009 Medium: Chromogenic Development Print Dimensions: Image: 14 in x 18 in Paper: 16 in x 20 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase through Fine Print Program

Title: The Transparent City 06 Date: 2008 Medium: Chromogenic Development Print Dimensions: Image: 14 in x 18 in Paper: 16 in x 20 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase through Fine Print Program

Architecture: Questions for Looking and Discussion

• What do you notice when you look at the image. What pulls your attention? Why?

• Do you see clues as to when and where this image might have been made? Describe.

• What is the mood or feeling of the work? How is that conveyed?

• What questions are raised for you in this work?

• Look at more than one image by each artist. What do the images have in common? How would you describe this artist’s style?

• We don’t see people in most of the images in this set. What might these places and

buildings suggest about the people who inhabit them?

• What do you think the artist was interested in or wanted to convey about this place? Why?

Deeper Reading: Adding Context We can learn a lot about some images just through what we observe in the photograph. In many cases learning about the artist, their process, and the cultural and historic context in which the work was made adds much to our understanding. For example, knowing more about recent and rapid development in the area surrounding Monterrey Mexico enhances the viewer’s understanding of Alejandro Cartagena Gonzalez’s work. With at least a few of the images in this set, after students carefully look at the images and consider the above questions, ask them to read about the artist and their work and learn about the cultural and historic context in which the work was made. The teacher or docent could also provide some of this information. After students have learned some context surrounding the work, ask them to reconsider the images and how this additional information impacts their understanding.