I photographed the Farnsworth House on a trip to Chicago, and I showed these pictures to
Jodi Kwan, who's the photo editor at New York Magazine.
She had asked me to photograph the glass house in anticipation of its opening the following
year, and I showed Jodi these pictures that I'd taken of the Farnsworth House with colored
filters.
I was very excited about me doing something that wasn't a conventional architectural photograph.
It was really her challenge to me to do something new with a glass house, which had been, of
course, photographed so many times it would be reproduced by conventional architectural
magazines that her challenge to me was to make something new of the glass house.
So I went there with a whole set of filters to try to photograph the glass house in a
way that had not been photographed before.
By photographing it on so many repeat visits, I was able to go beyond the classic views.
Of course, I have some of the classic views where they see the glass house straight on
or at a 45-degree angle, but I was able to make pictures of the glass house that are
angles that you don't usually see that are maybe more less substantial views of it or
fragments of it.
Even without the filters, I'm photographing different parts of the house, but with the
filters I'm sort of intensifying the experience of being there.
I always thought that adding these filters was like multiplying the intensity of what
I was seeing.
I tried to get different views of the glass house, but I also think that using the intense
colors that I used created a kind of new sense of what the glass house was.
I went to the glass house in March 2009 and just by chance the day before I arrived in
New Canaan, there was a substantial snowstorm or substantial by East Coast standards.
There was about six inches of snow and it was in the teens, it was probably 15 degrees
out.
I was really excited to be able to photograph the glass house in the snow, but I didn't
dress warmly enough, so I brought a garbage bag, not exactly sure why I brought a black
garbage bag with me in my camera kit, but I wrapped that around, wore that like a skirt
because the wind was so intense, and I photographed 0467 standing directly in front of the glass
house.
I line up the two doors through the house so that it's perfectly symmetrical, and then
I was taking a series of images.
This is one of the few glass house photographs that you can see my reflection in, and you
can see that I'm wearing a knit cap and a garbage bag if you look closely enough.
In 0775, I took, it was the first day I visited the glass house, and I brought a piece of
plexiglass that had small wedge-shaped color filters scotch taped to the glass, so I had
this whole array of triangular and diagonal trapezoidal filters that I would hold in front
of the lens, and then move across the lens of the camera until I found a combination
that I liked, and in this one you can see that there are these triangles and oblongs
of color that result from these, almost like a small stained glass window of colored gels
taped to plexiglass.
So it's this very fluid situation, I can see that a standard shot that perhaps an architectural
photographer would use, and then there are the sort of off-center ones or the ones that
are possibly closer to the intent of the building, that only present themselves as
I'm working, or sometimes don't present themselves until I've looked at my pictures and I go,
if I'd only stepped two feet to the right, we'd have this other vista.
So making architectural photographs is always a challenge between the standard, the classic
view, which is perhaps not even accurately describing the structure, and this other kind
of maybe more off-center view that is going to tell me something new about the structure.
