MY GEHRY JOURNEY
Francine B. Livaditis
www.livaditisarts.com
fran@livaditisarts.com
Since 2011, I have been photographing the interplay of light and color that can be found on the undulating, angled and curvilinear surfaces of buildings designed by the famed architect, Frank Owen Gehry. The stainless-steel skin—sometimes covered in vibrant color—used in the construction of these structures offers never-ending subjects for my camera’s long lens. My photographs belie the scale and function of the buildings and instead feature sections—or subsets—of each building’s surfaces. I focus on the unique color, form and texture presented at each location. The look of the surface changes with each visit as the time of day or year and weather conditions affect the play of light on the panels.
I visited Las Vegas, NV after construction of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health had wrapped up. I had photographed the construction of a few of the other buildings in Symphony Park starting in 2008, but was especially fascinated by the design of the Lou Ruvo Center and thrilled by the abstract photographs that I took in 2011 of its stainless steel and glass construction. Visitors to my studio responded to the images I shared with them. One visitor told me of another Gehry-designed building in Seattle, WA that had colored surfaces. That interaction led me to discover that Frank Owen Gehry’s iconic stainless-steel skins covered many buildings scattered throughout the US and internationally.
The next Gehry building that I photographed was the Museum of Pop Culture (formerly Experience Music Project) in Seattle, WA. I started photographing it in 2016. The surfaces of the building— located next to the Space Needle—were spectacular. Areas had panels of baby blue, magenta, red, gold and bare stainless steel. Surfaces were complex shapes forming an undulating sculptural wonder.
I had seen many images of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, CA and couldn’t wait until I could visit it in person and photograph the expansive structure in my own style in 2016. Being onsite at different times of day over a few days allowed me to capture many moods of the sweeping and flowing building as the intensity and angle of the sunlight changed.
Later that year, I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days in the Boston area and spent them photographing the Ray and Maria Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. The technical classroom and laboratory building has a curved tower of bright yellow panels and angled and curved walls with signature stainless steel panels—some polished to a mirror- like finish.
Although I come from film, Gehry Reflections consists of digital photographs that were developed in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to showcase the full dynamic range from lights to darks. These photographs were taken from 2011 through 2016 during multiple visits to the locations. In this portfolio, I focus primarily on the surface materials and their interaction with the buildings’ sculptural forms.