Museum of Contemporary Photography - Beyond the Backyard

Museum of Contemporary Photography - Beyond the Backyard

I was fortunate enough to view this show on its opening day in Chicago, IL. To be discussed further pending research into contemporary artists of particular interest - most specifically Bill Owens.

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Resonant passages from the show catalogue:

"Starting shortly after World War II, however, the nation experienced a second, more dramatic suburban expansion, and during this period the backyard's role shifted from being a decorative backdrop to a place integrated with daily life."

Wright's Usonian residences broke from the norm by prioritizing backyard space - the backyard usual acted as the focal point for the glazed side of the building.

"Bill Owens completed a groundbreaking study of suburban living in Livermore, California . . . . In the end, though, Owen's photographs, while exuberant and largely optimistic, reveal a deadpan sense of humor and an occasionally confounding mix of empathy and irony: what first appears as an ideal can take on tarnished or even farcical manifestations."

Pedro Guerrero - Picturing Wright: An Album from Frank Lloyd Wright's Photographer

Pedro Guerrero - Picturing Wright: An Album from Frank Lloyd Wright's Photographer

Lee Friedlander - Sticks & Stones: Architectural America

Lee Friedlander - Sticks & Stones: Architectural America

A resonant statement from the introductory essay by James Enyeart:

"Whether he's representing modest vernacular buildings or monumental skyscrapers, Friedlander liberates them from our preconceived notions and gives us a new way of looking at our surrounding environment"

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Perhaps less related. Friedlander's compositions are more abstract, less spare, more formal and ultimately, for me, less satisfying. Provides a visual link between the formal compositional strategies of the architectural photographers (which I believe typifies my style) and the content-and-collection driven strategy of Shore.

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Stephen Shore - American Surfaces

Stephen Shore - American Surfaces

Stephen Shore was a new and important discovery for me during the trip.

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Resonant passages from the introductory essay by Bob Nickas:

"The pictures in American Surfaces, taken over a twenty-two month period between 1972 and 1973, were not published in book form until 1999. That book, now out of print, comprises 77 plates, none of which is identified by location or date . . . . Here, with 312 plates, identified by city, month, and year, we are able to trace the artist's journey, to vicariously inhabit his everything/everyone mind, from beginning to end."

"The urban and commercial sprawl of the mid-to-late 1970s/early 1980s would threaten to envelop America in a dulling sameness, depriving much of the country of its distinct character and its people of their sense of place. This is, in part, what Shore hoped to, and did, capture."

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Shore's route, from NYC to Maryland. through the Carolinas the the South and then the Southwest, and finally towards Oklahoma City and Chicago, covers much of the same territory as our trip. While Shore's imagery featured much more than just buildings, his simple, frontal compositional style when targeting vernacular buildings resonates with mine. Plus, I'm in love with Kodachrome colour.

Julius Shulman - A Constructed View: The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman

A Constructed View: The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman

Shulman is perhaps second only to Ezra Stoller in the annals of modern architectural photography in America, having documented Jon Entenza's Case Study project for Arts and Architecture magazine. He also shot many of Wright's west coast projects.

Yukio Futagawa - Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian Homes

Yukio Futagawa - Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian Homes