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From Medicine to Modernism

14.08.09

The supreme modernist architectural photographer, the late Julius Shulman, could imbue even the blandest formation with glamour or intrigue and transform a masterpiece into an icon. Others stock on the genre's traditions, among them Laguna Beach resident and Red-letter day of Arts exhibitor Joel Panish.

As Panish's ebon and white photographs illustrate, much of the medium's success depends on exacting vision and spot-on timing.

Take Frank Gehry's much photographed Walt Disney concert amphitheatre. Rather than capture its angular beauty full-on, Panish divides it into visual increments that some will recollect as part of the famous whole, while others will appreciate for its interplay of light and shadow, planes and angles.

Panish prefers to streak in the morning, when the light is less harsh and yet sufficiently varied. Using digital cameras, he shoots color but prints in swart and white, a process that makes tonal gradations rise richer. He uses Photo Shop, but only to alter or deduct from a subject's surroundings. Thus, anyone buying, say, a view of the peaked planes of the Denver Art Museum can chose between a ecru black background or the dramatic clouds that hovered around the structure on shooting day. He captured the curvilinear Music downbeat of the Getty museum, and New York's Guggenheim and travels extensively in search of new edifice faces. "I move fast. I can go to three to five cities, never staying in one more than two days," he said.

Source: Laguna Beach Independent