860-880 North Lake Shore Drive-Chicago, Illinois, USA (architect Mies van der Rohe)

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Horseman SW612P + Rodenstock lenses

(detail Gandolfi Variant + 6x7 Linhof Rapid Rollex)

 

 

 

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900-910 North Lake Shore Drive - Chicago, Illinois, USA (architect Mies van der Rohe)

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Horseman SW612P + Rodenstock Lenses

 

 

 

Facing the beauty of Lake Michigan, The Esplanade Apartments on North Lake Shore Drive − not far from the famous Navy Pier − designed by architect Mies van der Rohe, probably enjoy the most beautiful situation of all his works.

These seminal and innovative buildings used unprecedented construction technologies, which became the standard used by Mies in all his future high-rise projects.

Completed in 1951, 860-880 Lake Shore Drive were the first towers in the world to exhibit the promise of glass-and-steel-frame construction, while the 900–910 towers, finished in 1955, were the first to totally accomplish the aluminum and glass curtain wall which became the hallmark of Mies’ oeuvre.

On the neighbourhood of The Esplanade Apartments is the John Hancock Building – which you can admire on the first photograph −, the Magnificent Mile portion of Michigan Avenue and Oak Street Beach. Also not far from here, you can go for a walk in Lincoln Park, which I also showed on a previous post about Mies' Commonwealth Promenade Apartments. 

I have used the Horseman SW612P, with Rodenstock lenses and a 6x9 roll film back, to produce these photographs on Kodak Ektachrome E100S film.

My son Jorge, assisted me on this rewarding task, in 1999. I think that we will never forget the days we have spent in Chicago.

 

 

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Tadao Ando - Vitra Conference Pavilion, Weil am Rhein, May 1995

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Vitra is a furniture company located in the small German town of Weil am Rhein, with headquarters in nearby Birsfelden, Switzerland.

With a privileged situation near the German- Swiss - French border, very close to the Swiss city of Basel, its strategic position combined with clever and innovative management have made Vitra a leading name in design furniture, manufacturing the works of many internationally acclaimed designers.

The company was founded in 1950 and today the Vitra Campus showcases buildings by some of the most famous architects, like Álvaro Siza (Factory Building and Passage), Frank Gehry (Vitra Design Museum, Vitra Atelier and Headquarters Building), Herzog & de Meuron (VitraHaus), Nicholas Grimshaw (Factory Building), Tadao Ando (Conference Pavilion, the subject of this post) or Zaha Hadid (Fire Station).

And the list goes on… Since I visited Vitra in 1995, several new buildings were added to the “collection”.

The Conference Pavilion by Tadao Ando was the architet’s first building outside of Japan.

It was built in 1993, just two years before I made these images, and has a very interesting characteristic: a large part of its volume is concealed under ground level, greatly reducing its impact on the surrounding landscape.

Predominantly built out of beton, with floors made out of wood, it manages to transmit a rather “soft” sensation. If you caress some of its walls, you almost have the feeling of touching velvet… If I remember well, it was explained to me that there were some ashes mixed up with the cement…

Myth or reality? I am not sure, but the feeling is definitely there!





















I went to Vitra on assignment by Editorial Blau. I was commissioned to photograph the Vitra factory building by Álvaro Siza, to be included in the book “Álvaro Siza, 1986 – 1995”, and I was travelling to produce photographs for that publication.

From Weil am Rhein I would still drive up North to Holland to shoot further Siza buildings for the project, then I would go down again to Barcelona…

Taking a look around Vitra Campus I was enchanted by this relatively small building and decided to ask if I also could photograph it. Permission granted, I thought that it was a good subject to get acquainted with my new Corfield WA67, just shipped by Mr. Brian Gould from England before I hit the road.

To photograph an entire building with only one camera / wide angle lens combination?

Was I driving nuts?



















As a matter of fact, I believe that some pictures could have benefited from some other outfit not so extremely wide angle, but all in all I believe that I can say that the Corfield WA67 did rather well, mainly when I think that it is a very specialized camera, which design was not surely meant for universal use…

On Interior Photography this (relatively) small wide angle shift camera really shines!

And that from day one!, as these photographs attest.

(I had only shot a very few images of the Santiago Calatrava bridge in Mérida, while driving by on my way up to Germany; forgot to pull out the dark slide on some of them…).

On this very first experience with the Corfield WA67, I could be convinced that I had made the right choice, searching for an easy to use piece of gear for Interior /Architecture Photography.

Up to this day, I keep on cherishing this little marvel of a camera.

Long live my Cory!



P.S.: Should you be curious about the Corfield, follow the tags below, and find my former post about it, in case you missed it before.

Some of this color photographs were published by the Dutch Architecture Magazine “de Architect” from Den Haag.

The black and white negatives have been sleeping in my archive. It is the first time that I show them!



Technical Data:
Camera - Corfield WA67 (6x7 format)
Lens (not interchangeable) - Schneider Super Angulon 5.6 / 47mm
Film - Kodak
Location - Weil am Rhein, Germany
Date - May 1995


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Mies van der Rohe - Seagram Building, New York

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I don’t remember that much about New York!

I recall crowds of multicolored people dressed up in multicolored cloths in front of multicolored snacks, I remember a flood of Yellow Cabs claxoning their way through the lights.

We stood and stared at The Flatiron, we gazed at The Empire State, we marveled at the magnificence of The Twin Towers…
If we were already impressed by the Chicagoan skyscrapers, then New York really blew our minds!

Maybe I forgot a lot about New York, but Mies’s Seagram Building!

I don’t remember that much being in New York!

I know of cheap motels before and cheap motels after, I know about driving all the way from Chicago, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, I know about heading all the way up to Montreal and Toronto - and Detroit, and Chicago again, and Houston, Washington D.C., and, and... New York again… “Bye, bye, so long! See you soon!”

I still feel the miles running on empty under my seat, I can’t forget beautiful Connecticut and astonishing Vermont, I can’t forget the immenseness of America…

We were on a diet of fast food, so don’t ask me about New York tables, we were on a diet of everything, so poor Jorge and me we had tomatoes and milk for lunch, we pretended not to see elegant people sitting on hip restaurants, we faked city slickers in search of the Midnight Cowboy…

We have seen the rich and we have seen the beggars!

Who cares if I have memories of New York?

We drove by Central Park and MoMa, we wandered up and down Broadway, we figured out how to get cheaply closed to the Statue of Liberty, we knew nothing about New York, there was nothing to know about New York, but cheap thrills!

I had never before seen a photographic shop where the films and equipment boxes travell by cable car to the customer, now I know I have seen it all, “Do you have a credit card? Yes? Allright, now we can talk!” (and I will be hopefully nice and kind to you, that’s me reading his mind…).

There were a whole lot of things that I had never seen before! There are a whole lot of things that I have never seen after!

New York, I am tired, let me take a rest. The journey ahead is a long one, we must be ready!

I mainly associate New York with the sounds of “The Heart of Saturday Night” by Tom Waits, though I suspect that we didn't meet there…

“Depot, depot, what am I doing here?
Depot, depot, what am I doing here?
I ain't coming, I ain't going
My confusion is showing
Outside the midnight wind is blowing Sixth Avenue
I'm gonna paint myself blue
At the depot”

All photographs made on Kodak Ektachrome film with a Horseman SW 612 Pro and Rodenstock lenses (Apo-Grandagon 35mm + Grandagon-N 75mm), except for the first view made with a Gandolfi Variant III and Schneider lens.



“(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night”

Well you gassed her up
Behind the wheel
With your arm around your sweet one
In your Oldsmobile
Barrelin' down the boulevard
You're looking for the heart of Saturday night

And you got paid on Friday
And your pockets are jinglin'
And you see the lights
You get all tinglin' cause you're cruisin' with a 6
And you're looking for the heart of Saturday night

Then you comb your hair
Shave your face
Tryin' to wipe out ev'ry trace
All the other days
In the week you know that this'll be the Saturday
You're reachin' your peak

Stoppin' on the red
You're goin' on the green
'Cause tonight'll be like nothin'
You've ever seen
And you're barrelin' down the boulevard
Lookin' for the heart of Saturday night

Tell me is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin?
Telephone's ringin'; it's your second cousin
Is it the barmaid that's smilin' from the corner of her eye?
Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.

Makes it kind of quiver down in the core
'Cause you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before
And now you're stumblin'
You're stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night

Well you gassed her up
And you're behind the wheel
With your arm around your sweet one
In your Oldsmobile
Barrellin' down the boulevard,
You're lookin' for the heart of Saturday night

Is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin?
Telephone's ringin'; it's your second cousin
And the barmaid is smilin' from the corner of her eye
Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.

Makes it kind of special down in the core
And you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before
It's found you stumblin'
Stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night
And you're stumblin'
Stumblin onto the heart of Saturday night

From the record “The Heart of Saturday Night” – Tom Waits (1974)



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Flor da Rosa, Crato - Carrilho da Graça (Wasted Project 2)

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When I came back to Portugal in 1990, after living in Germany for many years, the first architecture photographs I made, were assigned by the architect Manuel Tainha. I should photograph his just built Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação, Universidade de Lisboa.

It just so happened that the publisher, and also architect, Luiz Trigueiros from Editorial Blau, saw the images and liked them. He subsequently asked if I wanted to work for his magazine "Architécti" (by that time a really fine publication), and offered me two assignments: the above mentioned work by Tainha and the Piscina Municipal de Campo Maior, by João Luís Carrilho da Graça.

Photographing the works of these two master architects, I got started in Architecture Photography. Not a bad start, I could dare to say...

Around 2004, I thought about doing a White & Blue book on the recovery and conversion of the Flor da Rosa Monastery in Crato, Alentejo, into a Pousada, by Carrilho da Graça.

On my mind, it would be a fabulous companion book for my other publication about Santa Maria do Bouro, also a conversion of a Monastery into a Pousada, in Amares, by Eduardo Souto de Moura. Both are outstanding works, having their origins in historic buildings.

Well, I do love that!

The necessary steps were undertaken: I met João Luís who agreed to colaborate on the project, permissions and arrangements to photograph the building were granted, film was ordered, and so on and so on...

After many images were shot in 2005, the excellent designer Francisco Vaz da Silva, from Aveiro, made an interesting mock-up. Everything was looking good, and I thought that I could soon publish another book!

Then the wheel of fate started turning the other direction, things started going bizarre, and for many reasons I don't wish to detail, sometimes I don't even understand myself, the book never took form.

One more wasted project!

My loss, for sure!, nobody's gain, I guess...

Some fellow photographers claim that they don't like to talk about their equipment or methods. Some even say that they don't care about technical issues. How grateful they must be!

These fellows often excuse their relutance on talking about technic, with the explanation that only the image counts, and nothing else matters. While I might understand that point of view, with some of them I have to ask if they have technical knowledge at all...

I permit myself to be silly and disagree: yes, equipment and technic count!

I am not a magician and I don't have tricks upon my sleeves, I don't pull secret rabbits out of my hat!

I am a photo-freak with nothing to hide!

Are you perhaps eager to learn more about what kind of gear I used to make the above photographs? Look at the list below (I hope that I won't forget something important, I very often do!):

- Gandolfi Variant with 6x12 Horseman roll film back, and Linhof 6x7 Rapid Rollex (as the names imply, 6x12 and 6x7 formats); Schneider lenses.

- Horseman SW612 Pro (6x12 format, also doubles duty as 6x9 camera); Rodenstock lenses.

- Corfield WA67 (6x7 format) with fixed Schneider Super Angulon 47mm.

- Hasselblad 500 C/M (format 6x6); Carl Zeiss lenses.

- Film: Kodak Ektachrome 120.

- Light meter: Gossen Variosix F.

- Color meter: Gossen Color Master 3F.

- CC and LB Filters: Rodenstock.

- Tripods: Gitzo and Manfrotto.

- Lighting equipment: Hensel.

Got an idea?

Now a little joke, and food for thought, for imaginary clients: would you find it correct to pay me the same for this kind of service, as if I only took my Canon digi and a little tripod along?

No? Well, a lot of people do...

Oh, by the way, where was my digi-ding-a-dong-dings-bums?

P.S.: A very special thank you goes to my son Luís who assisted me on the photographic sessions and all the people involved, mainly the staff personnel at Flor da Rosa, who were always very kind and helpful.

Have fun!

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