Deconstructing Environmental Photographers 'The City'

When first observing all six images I noticed initial difference and similarities between them. The firth three by Steichen, Stieglitz and Coburn portray the Flatiron Building as a vast construction towering over the other surrounding buildings, trees and people below. 

In the first three, the photographers chose to take the image at ground level with trees in the foreground to highlight the height of the building. They were taken shortly after it was built when there was a lot of controversy surrounding it; a lot of the local community was angered by it looking too modern jutting out from the landscape. All three were photographed from similar positions in a park setting with the building slightly out of focus in the background with no detail looking more like a simple silhouetted shape.

On the other hand the other three images by Gropius, Evans and Abbott taken much later on from the late 1920s, focus much more on the architectural design of the Flatiron building. The photographical technology advances show greatly in these three images in comparison to the first three as they are all a lot sharper and have a more artistic framing with the Flatiron building as the main focus.  

As highlighted before the first three images are taken at similar angles from a humans point of view, while the compositional techniques become more experimental and artistic later on. They are taken more in context with the city rather than perseved as conflicting with the nature surrounding it.

 

Edward Steichen, The Flatiron, New York, 1905

Edward Steichen, the most frequently featured photographer in Alfred Stieglitz's magazine 'Camera Work' began experimenting with colour photography in 1904 and was one of the first in the US to use the Autochrome Lumiere proces; Steichen added colour to the platinum print by using layers of pigments suspended in a light-sesitive solution.

The photograph was taken at night with a long exposure which silhouettes the trees and figures in the foreground against the building with slight mist in the air and it is obvious that it has been raining as the path surface is reflective.

Steichen was part of the pictorialist movement, who wanted to stablise photography as a fine art. He believed the creativity of the artist was shown more in the printing of the image rather than the composition. 

Alfred Stieglitz, The Flatiron, 1903

Alfred Stieglitz, like Steichen in his career as a photographer worked to make the medium an accepted art form. He said the Flatiron building “appeared to be moving toward me like the bow of a monster steamer–a picture of a new America still in the making.” (American Visions, Robert Hughes, 1997)

Again he portrayed the building as controversial as he took the photograph the year after it was built; the tree in the foreground partly hides the skyscraper along with the soft tree line. The snow highlighted by the evening light gives the image soft tonal contrast which creates a very still, quiet scene. The softness of the almost two-tonal shades in the image makes the whole image almost out of focus.

The humans sat on the tiny benches in the foreground are dwarfed by the building quite a way in the background mirroring Japanese prints where humans were towered over by. naturally formed mountains. This influence can be seen also through the flattening of space created by quite a large depth of field.

Alvin Langdon Coburn, The Flatiron Building, 1911

In this image by Coburn has a different perspective in the sense that you are a passer-by glancing up at the towering building ahead. The image is much more tonal compared to the previous two with the building standing out against the moody sky; the street lights and the blurred figures highlights that it is the evening therefore Coburn must have used a longer exposure. 

Again like the previous two images silhouetted trees are featured in the foreground framing the scene however Coburn begins to contextualise the building in a city environment rather than purely conflicting with nature. The building also starts to become detailed rather than a basic shape in the backdrop as you can see dark windows.  

In his career Coburn became more and more abstract in composition through 1911 & 1912 focussing on industrial scenes.

Walter Gropius, The Flatiron Building, New York, 1928

Walter Gropius is one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture and found the Flatiron Building 'irresistibly exciting' as a design and a structure.

He photographed the building very differently to the first three images, in a much less uniformed fashion.

By photographing the building in this manner he highlights the very structured, organised design of the building enhancing the contrast between the hard lines of the window frames and the soft curve of the structure. He frames it in this way to turn the Flatiron building almost into an oversized sculpture, possibly how he perceived architecture when shaping modern construction for the future. 

Unlike the previous three images this was taken possibly midday as the sky is very bright creating a very bold outline of the building, while the sun is reflecting off areas of the building's side. The image feels as if it has been taken from a bypasser's point of view looking up disorientated by the magnitude of the soaring building. 

Walker Evans, Flatiron Building seen from below, New York City, 1928-29

Walker Evans took up photography the same year he took this photograph, developing his photographic style early in his career photographing subjects like the Great Depression; his work was particularly in opposition with the work of Steichen and Steiglitz commenting on their work, “I thought Steichen was too commercial and Steiglitz too arty, playing around, photographing the beautiful, calling it ‘God’…”

His images are quite poetic inspired by his love of literature, but also precisely realistic viewpoints. He photographs the Flatiron Building barely visible behind angular structures in the foreground making your eye home in on the central focus. His literature background comes through in his artistic portrayal of the building shot again during possibly the afternoon with the low sun bouncing off the left side of the structure. He would have found this set up purely through observing his surroundings as a normal member of the public glancing up at the skyscraper again giving the sense of looking through the eyes of a bystander.

The focal length and depth of field is quite large as the foreground and background is in focus and the tonal range is quite wide highlighting the lamp and black shape as being very close to the photographer while the buildings are highlighted by sunlight in the backdrop emphasising the height.

Berenice Abbott, The Flatiron Building, 1938

Abbott is most well-known for her black and white photographs of New York architecture and design in the 1930s.

She returned to New York at the time that she felt the environment was in transition observing "...the present jostling with the past". In this image of the Flatiron Building she is purely documenting and recording the building in its surrounding environment.

To highlight the magnitude of the building neither Gropius, Evans nor Abbott's images featuring anything at ground level creating this sense of peering, straining to see the top of this building. 

Unlike the previous two images the building is not portrayed in an artistic manner as she is literally recording her surroundings; shot on an overcast day their are no extreme tones on the image creating quite a grey scene. 

A year after Berenice Abbott took this image it was featured in her published text 'Changing New york' in 1939. In natural documentary style the image is completely in focus with a large depth of field to capture the detail of thing in the image The way that she photographs the building off-centre is very similar to Gropius' image in that half of the frame is taken up by sky; this could be to emphasise the interesting and ground-breaking shape and architecture of the building. 

To conclude I felt that the first three images by Steichen, Steiglitz and Coburn are very much traditionally artistic in their composition mirroring the set up of a painting. They were wanting to capture the building within its setting rather than focussing solely on the architecture and structure of the building.

Whereas the final three images by Gropius, Evans and abbott were documenting the unusual architectural design of the building and the modernisation going on at the time in American cities.