Chicago Architecture Black and White Photography | Geometric Building Lines
Repeating Windows and Vertical Lines Across a Modern Office Facade
I stopped looking at this as an office building and started seeing rhythm. The facade in Chicago had been reduced to a repeating sequence of narrow windows, dark vertical recesses and bright structural edges, with almost nothing left to identify the building as a whole.
That was exactly what interested me.
I framed tightly and allowed the architecture to run beyond every edge of the photograph. There is no roofline, entrance, street or surrounding skyline to establish scale. Instead, the repeated vertical lines take over the composition, broken only by the small projecting edges beside each window. Those interruptions create a second pattern running diagonally through the frame.
Black and white pushed the photograph even farther toward abstraction. Strong contrast separates the bright faces of the structure from the deep shadows between them, while the windows become narrow dark bands. From a distance, the building begins to resemble a carefully constructed graphic pattern rather than a conventional city scene.
Chicago has always given me plenty to work with architecturally, but I am often more interested in fragments than complete buildings. A small section can reveal geometry, repetition and design that disappear when I step back and try to include everything.
Here, the subject is still unmistakably architecture, but for me the photograph is really about lines. Repetition takes something completely functional and turns it into an almost abstract arrangement of light, shadow and form.
© Dan Kosmayer, 2011
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About My Fine Art Photography
Every photograph in my collection comes from my own travels, explorations, and years behind the camera.
I create my work as photographic art rather than mass-produced decoration. From street portraits and abandoned places to landscapes, architecture, and the unusual subjects I discover along the way, each image begins with something that made me stop and look.
My photographs are available in multiple sizes so the same image can work in anything from an intimate wall space to a large statement installation.
