Danny Lyon. (1967)




The Life and Death of Buildings
EXPLORING ARCHITECTURE, PHOTOGRAPHY and TIME
Princeton University Art Museum
July 23- November 6, 2011


PRINCETON, N.J.— The Life and Death of Buildings, opening July 23, 2011 and on view through November 6, 2011, explores the unique relationship uniting architecture, photography and time.

Architecture inhabits and embodies time; whether months or centuries in duration, a building’s life cycle of construction, transformation and afterlife gives tangible form to history and turns public space into an index of the past. A photographic image is literally made of time, showing viewers the projection of an instant in history. When engaging with a photograph of a built environment as it once looked, we find ourselves immersed in an historical experience that was without precedent before the invention of photography in 1839.

“A building concentrates history in one spot; a photograph carries history around the world,” said Joel Smith, curator of photography at the Princeton University Art Museum and curator of the exhibition. “When these two forms of knowledge intersect, our historical imagination is ignited, whether we’re looking at a site in Jerusalem in the nineteenth century or Manhattan’s skyline in August of 2001.”

An indirect meditation on the upcoming 10th anniversary of 9/11, The Life and Death of Buildings doubles as a survey of extraordinary photographs from the 1840s to the present, drawn from Princeton’s collection and a select list of public and private lenders. The exhibition’s central theme—the constancy of architecture’s life and death, as uniquely realized through the camera—is recurringly struck by selections from Danny Lyon’s series The Destruction of Lower Manhattan (1967). A recent gift to the Museum, the 72-image series records the abrupt, unsung demise of the antebellum neighborhoods that were torn down to make way for the World Trade Center. Highlights from the series find their place amid works by an international roster that includes William Henry Fox Talbot, Eduard Baldus, Alexander Rodchenko, Alfred Stieglitz, Laura Gilpin, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and Zhang Dali.

Casting a sidelight on photography’s unique historical voice is a group of major works in other media, each reflecting in its distinct way on time and the lives of buildings. Gordon Matta-Clark’s Splitting: Four Corners consists of the four roof corners of a New Jersey house demolished in 1974; in a gallery context, the empty space in their midst feels both sculptural and historical. A lengthily inscribed Yuan Dynasty painting of a seventh-century royal pavilion exemplifies a Chinese perspective that identifies a monument neither by its form nor by its materials (the pavilion has been rebuilt on its site more than two dozen times) but by the inaugural act of consecration that invests the structure with its meaning. Richard McGuire’s six-page comic Here (1989), a widely influential work in contemporary graphic narrative, keeps the eye fixed on one corner of a domestic interior but leapfrogs through time, pointedly juxtaposing future and past events to suggest the central yet ephemeral role of shelter in human fortunes.

The Life and Death of Buildings will be on view only in Princeton, and is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue by Joel Smith, Princeton curator of photography, distributed by Yale University Press and available in the Museum Store.

Princeton University Art Museum

The Big Three

Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand
Masterworks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Malcolm Daniel
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Yale University Press (2010)

This is the companion publication to the current exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand runs through April 10, 2011). The book contains all of the plates from the exhibit and a well written essay by Malcolm Daniel, curator in charge of photographs for the museum.
While this book is beautifully printed with high quality image reproductions, it confirms for me the most resonating aspect of the exhibit, and that is the pictorial nature of Steichen's work. The work of Stieglitz and Strand can for the most part be fully appreciated in a high quality book. It is always best to see an actual print on the wall, but I don't believe the difference in visual appreciation is anywhere near as great for Stieglitz and Strand as it is for Steichen. I had never seen actual prints of Steichen's work before I went to this exhibit, and they blew me away. It was as if I was seeing his work for the very first time, and yet I had seen it in books many times.

The images involving Rodin are remarkable. Steichen visited Rodin's studio every weekend for a year before he asked to take portraits of the artist. The images Steichen made of Rodin's Balzac sculpture in the moonlight, using exposure times ranging from fifteen minutes to one hour are superb beyond words, and the image Rodin, Le Penseur is as close to a renaissance painting as a photograph can get.


Edward Steichen. Rodin,Le Penseur.(1902)


There are three versions of The Flatiron Building in the exhibit, hung side by side in a commanding display. They are each slightly different in color toning, and were printed in 1904, 1905, and 1909. Again, I have seen this image in books dozens of times, but realize now that I have never truly seen it.

Edward Steichen.The Flatiron Building, (1905)

The works in this exhibit are all from the Met’s own collection, which began with a gift of photographs from Stieglitz in 1928. Stieglitz considered the acceptance of his gift by the museum’s board of trustees to be nothing short of miraculous in opening “its sacred halls to Photography”, and this exhibit provides a look at the building blocks of photography’s now accepted place among traditional fine art institutions. Masterpieces from each photographer are shown in separate galleries, with works spanning from Stieglitz’s 1893 Winter, Fifth Avenue to a portrait of Stieglitz taken by Strand in 1939. The exhibit clearly separates the distinct style and professional careers of each photographer, and at the same time tells the interwoven story that connects them.

These are my favorites...(cont'd)



Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe by Arnold Newman (1944)

So simple, and yet overwhelmingly powerful. Even if one knew nothing about the subjects of this portrait, there is no mistaking their importance and aura. Newman used his gift of placing artists within the context of their artistic style to the fullest in this beautifully crafted arrangement.