To be honest, there is nothing about this subject that connects to Halloween, though perhaps the appearance of this rendition of the subject may fit. If you want to continue with your Halloween-like impression of this photography, you may wish to stop reading right here. On the other hand… I made this photograph on an overcast afternoon in Amsterdam this past summer.
Main interior space of the historic, modernist architecture Austrian Postal Savings Bank
Today I’m breaking up the stream of Eastern Sierra autumn color photographs and returning to the even larger stream of photographs from our travels this past summer. This time we’re back in Vienna, where we spent four nights back in August. It was our first visit and, as seems to be the case with first visits to such places, the experience was a combination of being fascinated/impressed by the city along with beginning to get a sense of its character. Four days is, of course, too little time to really understand a place, but during four days our relationship to such a place changes quite a bit.
We got a recommendation from someone to locate and visit the Austrian Postal Savings Bank (Österreichische Postsparkasse), and we’re glad we went. The place does not seem at all to be on the lists of “things you must see in Vienna,” but if you are interested in architecture and history it probably should be. I won’t try to recount my limited understanding of the history here (there are great resources online, and you can start with Wikipedia) but the modernist building is remarkable, both in its overall effect and in its details. This photograph shows the main room, now mostly vacant, which is a remarkable modern, bright, and airy space, lit from about via a huge skylight.
A pool and exterior components of Le Centre Pompidou, Paris
The Centre Pompidou in Paris is a fascinating place in many ways. To start with, there’s a lot going on in the surrounding neighborhoods, the large courtyard in “front” of the building, and inside. The art collection is quite wonderful. And, of course, the building itself is unusual and something of a marvel. It also provides plenty of opportunities for photography.
Many of the components of the building are on the exterior instead of being hidden behind a shell. Architectural structures, stairways, ventilation systems and more are right there for the observer to see. This photograph incorporates some of those structural elements, which form the main criss-crossing form in the image. It may not be immediately obvious, but the photograph was made outdoors and many floors above the ground level. Here a shallow pond reflects the structural elements and a bit of Paris sky, with the upper floors of surrounding buildings filling in the middle of the scene in the distance.
We had previously walked past the Pompidou Center museum but had not stopped, instead visiting other museums on our list. The structure is famous (or infamous, depending on your aesthetics) for its unusual architecture, which exposes lots of things that would usually be hidden beneath the skin of a more traditional building — ventilation ducts, stairs, escalators, structural reinforcements, and more. While the art inside the building was fascinating, the photographer in me was attracted to the structure itself.
I made this photograph from the ground level before we went inside. The simple “x” shape is superimposed on some of those exposed structural details, in this case a bunch of outside stairways. The color scheme of the building in this area is almost purely monochromatic — at first I thought I was looking at a black and white image, until I noticed a bit of yellow color along a margin. Since it was already monochromatic I decided to eliminate even that bit of color and go with a black and white rendition.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
