Architectural Abstraction

Last year I began to notice a trend in my photography...one of abstraction. Last year I began the Threshold Series, of which I posted on quite often last year. Over the summer I started thinking about looking at a particular kind of structure. Growing up in the Midwest, it is hard not to have had some connection to the many grain elevators sprinkled across the region. My hope is to begin a series of photographs that look at these historic agricultural facades in a slightly different way...less as a landscape and more as a tightly focused work abstracting the buildings geometry highlighted by shadow and light falling across its angles and planes.

The first image is reminiscent of the Threshold Series. However, the second image is more like the series I am envisioning for this fall. In part, I think this series is partially indebted to some of my summer reading on the precisionist Charles Sheeler. Watch for more to come on this project and its connection to Sheeler.

Threshold Series

Threshold Series

Threshold Series (continued)

I am continuing the Threshold series again this semester. It will make up a small portion of the total work for the summer classes.

These are from my recent trip across North Dakota.

Threshold Series

These are a few more of the threshold series from this semester. These images are from a local self-storage place.

Threshold Series

Ive posted a few more from my recent adventures around Grand Forks. One of the unique things about GF is that much of the architecture seems unchanged from the 60's and 70's. There are a good number of retro signs that I have begun to photograph here as well. Someday soon I will try to pull them together into a post as well.

Threshold Series

Here are a couple more shots from last week Friday.

Threshold Series

It has been a while since I have had time to get out to shoot but I managed to get out 3 times this week (despite having to wear a boot for a stress fracture). These are a few shots from my Thursday afternoon adventure.

Threshold V

The top two shots are from Sioux Center Iowa, the third and fourth is from Thompson North Dakota, and the bottom from Grand Forks ND.

Again, these are JPEG thumbnails without any cropping or adjustments. Essentially they look rather poor next to the final products.

One of the things that I have been reconsidering, is the amount of foreground. My instructor is not as keen on the shots where the implied horizon bisects the image, but it seems to cause an interesting effect that I have not yet teased out in visual understanding. Many of the New Topographers do use this generally discouraged manner of shooting but for their work and purpose it was/is necessary. I've not decided or come to a conclusion about it for my own work.

Threshold IV

I've uploaded a few more of my untouched photos in this series. In the coming days I will be posting on locating this body of work within the larger art context.

Threshold III

The threshold is an interesting and complicated phenomena. It is in one sense a protective barrier meant to divide. Doors and windows function as thresholds because they keep certain things in and others out. In day to day life windows and doors keep the cold in or keep it out. Through our doors and windows we keep our pets and children inside and keep insects out. This in/out division caused by thresholds can be applied culturally as well. An initiation rite, which is a form of threshold, is meant to separate the proverbial men from the boys and while details of these rites vary from culture to culture, it is like to be found around the world. In this sense, the baptismal font is an excellent concrete example. Few rites exist in our typical American culture. Getting drivers license or getting a first car, voting, turning 21 to buy alcohol, graduations, marriage, menstruation for women, and sex for both men and women often constitute the main ritual thresholds for our secular society. Within the religious realm, we find a few more: baptism, confirmation, first communion, marriage, bar & bat mitzvahs to name a few.

Returning to this series of photos, the windows and the doors are subtly suggestive of an openness to these realities. And yet, the astute observer will no doubt have noticed that in many of the shots the thresholds have been covered over or filled in with brick or wood. They become a rupture in the pattern of building.

Threshold II

One of the things I love about this series is that it is an honest look at our surroundings. I make no attempt to hide the blemishes of the building...rust, paint chips, cracks, broken glass, mismatched siding and other things which tend to bring alternative movements into the architectural flow of the building.

I encourage you to take time to view the images but pay attention to the vertical and horizontal structures and color fields. Perhaps even take the time to scour the image for the variety of shapes and their direction.

Threshold: A Photographic Inquiry

This semester I am pursuing an independent study in photography on the idea of the threshold. Essentially this means that I am shooting a lot of pictures of doors and windows.

Philosophically the idea of threshold is an interesting one intimately related to place, ritual and o/Otherness. These are my driving ideas behind this series. (I also find it fitting that this class is in essence the threshold to this new pursuit of a MFA).












Visually I am learning to articulate what I am seeing through the lens. I am finding that my attempts are to reduce or abstract elements from the larger architectural whole into austere geometry, line, rhythm, and color fields. I find ruptures in pattern especially interesting.