The Cathedral of Mexico, ca. 1890. Photo: William Henry Jackson.
Shanghai Tower. Photo: Mary Beth Woiccak.
Shanghai Tower. Photo: Mary Beth Woiccak.
Elevated sidewalk in front of Oriental Pearl Radio and TV Tower in Shanghai. Photo: Mary Beth Woiccak.
The Flatiron Building, 1903. Photo: Alfred Stieglitz.
It is as if I am in a time machine shifting with each turning page of Architecture in Photographs by Gordon Baldwin (J. Paul Getty Trust, 2013.) The 75 photographed buildings range from Egypt in 1858 to Alabama in 1994, Spain in 1866 to Johannesburg in 1986. The places, actually the structures, that stand out are the Eiffel Tower, a cathedral in Reims, a skyscraper in New York City --- all of which are shown at the time they were under construction. Visible scaffolding, a tower not yet towering, and cranes indicate this. These images capture a moment before the structure became a monument or icon.
I might not have been walking around Paris in 1888 or New York City in 1910, but I was in Shanghai in 2012 and witnessed a building under construction. Coming up the escalators from the subway and ascending to a second-floor sidewalk past shops, malls, and a McDonald's, I saw the Shanghai Tower going up. I had to wrench my neck all the way back to see this growing skyscraper and surrounding buildings that were standing at attention in this claustrophobic district of Pudong. Designed by Gensler, it is the second-tallest building in the world --- soon to be the third. I could feel its eagerness to race up the neighboring skyscrapers (Jin Mao Tower and Shanghai World Financial Center), to reach and pass their apexes as fast as it could.
The air was thick and foggy; the photos in Baldwin's book from the 1880s are blurry and foggy due to the camera and processing technology; my photo from 2012 was fuzzy due to the poor air quality.
The selection from Baldwin, a curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, is superb and calculated. His choices represent a timeline of photographers, techniques, and styles of architecture. It is interesting to reflect on the evolution of these aspects for built projects around the globe and right here in Houston.
Something to keep in mind when you see cranes spiking up around the city.
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Read Cite photographer Paul Hester on the use of the view camera in architectural photography.
