civilized ku # 197 ~ an optical oddity
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at 09:27AM 
The Bowery Savings Bank (former) • click to embiggenI don't know if you'll see it or not, but this building has a rather bizarre architectural detail - the rather impressive entrance is built at an odd angle relative to the building facade.
The building sits on a corner (stage left) that is not square - the cross street intersects Bowery Street at a slightly acute angle and it is to the cross street that the architect chose to align the entrance walls. Whether this rather weird alignment was by client request or a visual "joke" on the part of the architect is unknown to me, but it is optically quite disorienting.
In making this picture, I "squared" myself to the entrance, not the building facade, in order to achieve the most obvious visual sense of something's-not-right-here that I could.
Reader Comments (1)
Mark I would like your take on the following quote;
“It makes me stronger because I’m determined to get out of there and back to photographing,” he said. “Besides, now I have a much better art background. I think I can see better. I’ll be a different photographer.”
It comes from this story,
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/showcase-15/