Columbia Event #4

Building Pictures

I have always had an interest in photography as well as architecture, given this the gallery show Building Pictures, at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in the 600 S. Michigan Ave. building of Columbia College seemed like a great pick for something that I would be interested in seeing.
“Architects and photographers both transform space, yet they both approach their tasks from opposite directions.” Given this quote the difference between the two is existence or nonexistence, architects usually are looking for something that isn’t around and want to create it. Where as photographers are looking for images or spaces that already exist that they can capture. As soon as you walk into the gallery in the 600 Michigan Ave. building you are immediately confronted with six very large photographs, large enough to cover a wall. Each one of these photographs is uniquely capturing and portraying the structural magnificence, and architectural integrity of the buildings shown, along with the unique vision of the photographer. Given the photographers unique points of view some of these pictures are able to make a statement, some are there just to show the purity of an architectural structure. Others might challenge the way you might typically look at a building or an individual space, and some portray a time line of structural events.
Dionisio Gonzalez is one of the photographers who are exhibiting their work in this gallery, he is also one of the photographers who is making a statement with his pictures. Gonzalez uses his photography as a way to bring attention to the social issues that exist in the favelas, or shantytowns of Brazil. Gonzalez does this by taking his photographs of the favelas and placing modern contemporary architecture within the all ready cluttered shanties. It is said he has done this in a reaction to the governments Proyecto Cingapura project, which was supposed to re-urbanize the favelas and provide better living conditions but has come up lacking in every area that it has proposed. On the other hand photographer Terence Gower took a much less political approach to his work and instead portrays the work of architect Luis Barragan who used color in a way to transform style into a more rich experience. Barragan does this by portraying architectural spaces that may even look abstract in black and white photographs hung on brightly painted colorful walls.
I really enjoyed this gallery show and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys photography, the marvels of architectural structures and spaces, or even anyone how enjoys staring into a picture and imagining all the thousand words, and ideas a photograph can possess.