Picturing Buildings: Photographers and Architecture, 1855–1985
Featuring a selection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century photographs from the Museum’s collection, Picturing Buildings illuminates the enduring appeal of photographing architecture, from historic Turkish mosques and New York City skyscrapers, to industrial factories and intimate domestic interiors. Each of these visually and spatially complex sites provides photographers with representational challenges and endless opportunities to innovate. This exhibition explores how photographers working in a range of contexts—from travel photography and photojournalism to historical documentation and modern art—use architecture to develop pictorial strategies in their own medium. Through selective framing, dramatic perspectival distortion, and heightened contrasts between light and dark, photographers reinterpret their architectural subjects by focusing on the creative act of constructing a photograph. The resulting images reveal our surrounding built environment in new ways and highlight the intriguing transformation that takes place when the camera converts three dimensions into two.
Lead support for Picturing Buildings: Photographers and Architecture, 1855-1985 is provided by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost and the Herbert W. and Susan L. Johe Endowment.
Images
Jean Sébah, Interior of the Mosque Amrou, ca. 1875, albumen print. University of Michigan Museum of Art, Transfer from the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 1980/1.201
Edward Weston, Western Plaster Mill, Los Angeles, 1925, gelatin silver print. University of Michigan Museum of Art, Gift of The Morris and Beverly Baker Foundation, in memory of Morris D. Baker, a graduate of The University of Michigan, 2000/2.145
André Kertész, Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1929, gelatin silver print. University of Michigan Museum of Art, Museum Purchase, 2011/2.166
Walker Evans, Breakfast Room at Belle Grove Plantation, White Chapel, Louisiana, 1935, gelatin silver print. University of Michigan Museum of Art, Museum purchase made possible by the W. Hawkins Ferry Fund, 2002/2.233
Berenice Abbott, New York at Night, 1932, gelatin silver print. University of Michigan Museum of Art, Museum purchase made possible by a gift from Helmut Stern and the Jean Paul Slusser Memorial Fund, 2002/1.156
Harry Callahan, Eleanor, 1948, gelatin silver print. University of Michigan Museum of Art, Gift of Two Friends of the Museum, 1991/2.97
Linda Butler, Meeting Room, Sabbathday Lake, Maine, 1982-84, gelatin silver print. University of Michigan Museum of Art, Gift of Linda Butler, 1985/2.61