>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, DC. >> Ford Peatross: Good
afternoon, everyone. Thank you for coming. On behalf of the Princeton
Photographs Division of the Library of Congress and its Center
for Architecture, Design, and Engineering, it is my
great pleasure to welcome you to today's program, an
illustrated presentation by the distinguished
American architect and photographer, Norman McGrath. I would like to remind you that
this event is being videotaped for broadcast on the library's
website and other media. We encourage you and the
audience to ask questions and offer comments during the
question-and-answer period, but please realize that in
participating in the Q&A period, you will be consenting to the
library possibly reproducing and transmitting your remarks. Perhaps we also should take a moment
to thank the Roman goddess Minerva, the Roman goddess of
wisdom and learning, who presides over this place,
who apparently has worked out an accommodation with her
sometimes feckless brother Mercury, the god of travel and
transportation, so that you all could be here today. My name is Ford Peatross, and I
direct the Center for Architecture, Design, and Engineering, whose goal
is to further our understanding and appreciation of its subjects. Certainly, this is what
Norman McGrath has done during over five decades as an
architectural photographer. I am here today with my
colleague, Mari Nakahara -- >> Mari Nakahara: Hello. >> Ford Peatross: Our new
Curator of Architecture, Design, and Engineering, to
introduce Norman, in possibly my last official
program introduction before I retire at the end of April after
over 40 years at the library, happily handing over the
reins to Mari and doing so with total confidence in her
abilities to carry on this work. But back to the subject
at hand, born in London, Norman's father was the
Australian born architect and author Raymond McGrath. Norman was educated in Ireland, where he earned an engineering
degree at Trinity College Dublin. Thus, how appropriate
it is that he is here with us on St. Patrick's Day. And I see he's wearing a bit o' the
green, as are a number of people in the audience, and I
failed, and I'm part Irish. I don't know how that happened. After working in Dublin for a year
or so as a structural engineer, he moved to New York in 1956. Over the next five years, he
gradually made the transition into the field of professional
photography, specializing in architecture
and interiors. Norman has become one of the best
known and respected photographers of the world's great
buildings and architecture. Every major architectural
publication has featured his images. His long career includes
a wide variety of work for many well-known
architects and designers. Norman is the only
architectural photographer invited to join Canon's Explorers of
Light program, which includes many of the top professionals in a wide
variety of photographic specialties. His most popular book,
"Photographing Buildings Inside and Out", has sold more
than 47,000 copies. For Princeton Architectural
Press, he co-authored two books, "Manhattan Skyscrapers" with text
by Eric Nash, published in 1999 with revised editions in 2005 and
2010, and "Skyscraper Rivals", a book featuring four
early New York buildings, with text by Daniel
Abramson, published in 2000. In 1985, the AIA selected
Norman for its Institute Honor, and the New York chapter of the
AIA awarded him a special citation for photography in 1999. In addition to his assignment work,
Norman gives seminars and teaches with the Maine Photographic
Workshops and the Palm Beach Photo
Workshops and the Calumet Institute in conjunction with the
University of Maryland. In 1995, the AIA selected
him for its Institute Honor. And I've already talked
about the special citation. [ Laughter ] Exhibits of his work include
a solo exhibition of his black and white photographs
at the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland in 2001. Norman contributed a
photo essay to the book "New York's Pennsylvania Station". It's written by my
esteemed colleague, Hillary Ballon, and
published in 2002. This was especially meaningful
because Norman's first job in architectural photography was
documenting the 1963 demolition of McKim, Mead, and White's
great lost structure, whose fate is still very
much in the news today. The significance of the station's
destruction further was made tangible by architectural historian
Vincent Scully's memorable words, quote, "One entered
the city like a god. One scuttles in now
like a rat," unquote. Both McGrath and Scully have shown
us that architecture does matter. In 2011, Norman began
to donate the archive of his professional photography
to the Library of Congress, rights free, that now includes
well over 100,000 large format film and high resolution digital images. We are fortunate that
Norman will now share a part of his considerable talent,
experience, and wisdom in helping us to understand what makes
architectural photography different. I can think of no one better
qualified for the task. [ Applause ] >> Well, thank you very much for those glowing words,
and thank you all. It's great to see such a
lively and full audience here. I'm really honored, in
particular, of course, and I have to wish you all
a happy St. Patrick's Day. When Ford gave me the opportunity of
selecting a day in April, of course, he sooner came to today's
date, the 17th of March. I knew that that's
the date it had to be. In any event, so here I am. And thank you, Ford, for all
those interesting details about my early life because that
now means that I don't have to go into too much detail about that. But let me say, of course, that my
father was enormously influential and without fostering the interest
in architecture that I gained through him, I would
not be where I am today. And you might wonder why
it is that, for example, I did not study architecture
in the first place. And it so happens that
Trinity College Dublin, where most of my education was
funneled in the early '50s, has no school of -- it
has all the major schools, but no school of architecture. So you cannot study -- in
other words, if you go -- if you interview an Irish architect
and asked him where he studied, he's certainly not going to
say Trinity College, Dublin, because it has no school. So I did what I thought
was the next best thing, and as a structural
engineer, of course, structural engineers work
with architects closely. And they are the ones that
make the buildings stand up, make the dreams come true. And so, they play an important role. One of the things, however, that engineering training
normally lacks is any emphasis on the aesthetics of things. And so, it's -- that is usually -- when you get really
elaborate structures, that's left to those few engineers
who really have the imagination to see how marvelous
these structures can be, people like Calatrava, for example, and Luigi Nervi before
him, and so on. And -- but they are unusual,
and they are standouts. And -- but I wanted to dwell on the
fact that architectural photography as a field of endeavor is different
than other fields of photography. Why is that? Part of the reason is that we are
all very familiar with the subject, what it looks like, and if the
photograph doesn't look the same way the structure does,
we feel uncomfortable. I am -- I used to constantly gripe
about the fact that, for example, when I picked up the real estate
section of the New York Times that very frequently the buildings that I saw depicted there
were very, very distorted. They were taken with
wide-angle lenses, and clearly the photographers
had tilted their cameras back. And these buildings
looked like pyramids more than the rectangular subjects
that they in fact were. And I often wondered why they
accepted that, because I knew that they -- it didn't
have to be that way. The New York Times didn't have and still doesn't have many
photographers who are really gifted in the documentation
of architecture. They have a couple, but that's not
their -- normally their main thrust. So one of the aspects
then is to somehow or other determine what it is
that making the documentation of architecture such a challenge. And in the early days of
architectural photography, most of it was exterior initially. The lenses that most photographers
used were fairly long focal lengths lenses. In other words, you stood
back from your subject. And because these were longer
focal length lenses, the -- you did not get the same
depth that is possible when you approach your
subject more closely and photograph it with
a wider angle lens. This is true of both
interiors and exteriors. And this is a factor which really
comes into play because today -- well, let me go back a bit. When I got into photography first,
I was a -- really a late bloomer, really, you might say, because
I didn't take any photographs until after I graduated
from college. And at that point,
I decided I was -- I knew that I wanted
to come to America. And I thought, well, you know,
I'm going to document a little bit of what Dublin is all about so
that when I come to America, I can show my American relatives
what Ireland is all about. And indeed, I am -- even before
I came here, I was half-American, because my mother was
from Dallas, Texas. So it was really because
of my American grandfather, whom I met as a child,
that I had decided a long, long time ago that I wanted
to come and live in America. I mean I really literally made that when I was still
a very young person. And so, the sort of die was cast. In any event, when I got into
the field of photography first, on graduation, my best friend
was given a graduation present of a brand-new camera, and
I bought his old camera. And that was the camera
that I started out with, which was a 35-millimeter
range finder camera, very straightforward,
rather awkward to use. Every time you changed -- it
had interchangeable lenses, but every time you changed
the lens, you had to put on a separate viewfinder because
it wasn't a reflex camera. So it was very, very tedious,
completely unlike today's cameras, which make life so easy
that you not only don't have to know what the settings mean
or say, you know, it does it all. Now, not all cameras,
but many of them do. So in the -- one had to learn
the hard way by trial and error. And because of my interest
in architecture, a lot of the photographs that I initially took were
architectural in nature. And I quickly found
what a challenge it was. And I came to America. I worked as -- for
four or five years as a structural engineer,
as Ford has mentioned. And at the end of that period,
the firm that I had been with went into a rather long, slow
decline due the death of principle partners in the firm. And at that point, they --
you know, they had been one of the top ten consulting
firms in the country with over 100 structural engineers. They gradually wrapped
-- that got reduced. I was number 25. They went down to about 20. But at that point, I
said, "Do I really want to be a structural engineer
for the rest of my life?", because I had been finding that, although engineering
was interesting, it wasn't as creative
as architecture was. It just lacked that extra
thing for me at that point. So I decided, okay, I'm going
to have a fling at photography. I'd been becoming an increasingly
involved amateur at that point. I'm talking now about the
late '50s, early '60s. And so, I went out, bought myself
a four by five view camera. I already had determined
that the tool of choice in that era was a four by five
view camera, and if I was going to be serious about the subject, I
had to have one of those cameras. Well, there weren't very many
places to learn how to do that. So it was a lot of
question of trial and error. And in those early days, I actually
spent quite a bit of time here in Washington, DC, as what can be
described by my old friends here, the Luces [assumed
spelling], whom I meet today for the first time in 53 years. [ Laughter ] And that's saying something. So I would come down to Washington,
and I would stay with my aunt and uncle, who lived in Chevy Chase. And I got -- I became very
friendly with a couple of Washington architects,
one of whom, a man named Tad Dynelle [assumed
spelling], was very interested in a book on Georgetown
architecture. So I would come down, and I would
go out with Tad with my by four by five view camera
and document all of -- all the famous houses in
Georgetown from that era. And we -- I even had I think
probably the first exhibition of photography was something
that Tad had organized in promotion of that idea. Sadly, the book never
came to fruition. But it was a very good
way of cutting my teeth. In any event, not long after I
had made this decision to get into the field, I got a call from
one of the engineers who had been in the firm that I had also been in, and he said he had
left the firm too. And he was one of the associates
and had founded his own firm. And on the strength
of his major client, which was the Intercontinental
Hotels, he was looking for employees. And he said, "Norman, I hear you're
interested in getting into the field of architectural photography. Are you also interested in eating?" [ Laughter ] And that was becoming
rather pertinent. So I decided, yes,
that that was something that I was interested in doing. And I managed to make a -- an arrangement with him
where I worked part time. Now that meant that I no longer
had to rely on any income, which was pretty minimum
in the initial stages. I had also decided that the way
to get a foothold in the field of architectural photography
was to try and get publication
as much as possible. And in those -- in those days, there were four major
architectural magazines. It's amazing to think
that of those four, only one still exists,
Architectural Record. None of the others, Architectural
Plus, Progressive Architecture, they're all gone by the [inaudible]. Now these were magazines that I
worked for on a regular basis. I knew the people there. I would photograph a lot
of things on speculation, bring them to their attention. Sometimes I would get assignments
then to go back and do them again. One such assignment I
did was on the way back from Washington, DC, to New York. I stopped in Baltimore, and it
was just after the completion of the One Charles Center by Mies
van der Rohe, beautiful afternoon. I took out my four by five camera,
and I shot the hell out of it. And I got back to New York, and
I called up Architecture Forum, and I said, "By any chance, would
you be interested in photographs of the new Charles Center?" And they looked at
me, and they said, "We just sent back a
photographer for the second time and has produced absolutely
unusable material. Are we interested?" Well, not only did
they get featured. They got on the cover
of the magazine, and I got assignments
from Mies's office. I never met -- got to meet Mies, but
I got assignments from his office. And I met associates
from his office. And that was -- you know, that
was a tremendous piece of luck. Another thing that happened
here in Washington, DC, was that back in the early
'60s, Interiors Magazine decided to do a feature on Washington
architects and interiors for the national convention
of the NSID. And that was edited by a lady
named Olga Geft [assumed spelling]. This magazine had absolutely
no money. I don't know how they ever
put that magazine out. And so, most of the time,
Olga would take the pictures. And she was a pretty
good photographer, but she really didn't have the time because she was running
the magazine as well. So what she would do is
she would say, "Look, I want to go feature this building." And so, she would twist the arms
of the architects of the buildings to employ me to take the
pictures, and I would do that. And that's how I met
many of my early contacts in the Washington, DC, area. And then I -- a lot
of the -- of that -- I think it was 1963 vintage
edition featured my work and -- in Washington, DC. And it was, you know, another way
of -- that luck played a part. But I interrupted myself
a little bit. One of the things that I -- when
I got into the field early on, wide-angle lens photography
was in its -- I mean it was still a
very developing field. I felt, especially with interiors,
that when you got into an interior that you -- that you
needed to do that. And in order to do that, you needed to have a fairly wide field
to capture the interior. But you had to do that
very carefully because if you don't the
picture gets very distorted and uncomfortable. So you -- it's always a compromise. The job of -- or what it
boils down to in many cases is that you are trying to disguise
the fact that you've used as wide a focus length lens or as
short a focal length that you have to give you the coverage
that you want without making it look distorted. You want to get -- you want to sort of capture what it's
like to be in the space. And also, you want to -- if
you have to introduce lighting into that space, do
so very carefully, because if it's obvious,
I think it detracts. I -- and this is particularly
true in today's -- in a more sophisticated era when
most interiors, be they domestic or otherwise, involve lighting
consultants and so on so that most of them are well lit and they don't
need a lot of supplemental lighting. So if somebody looks at a photograph
of mine and says did I light it or not, then I feel I've
succeeded because they don't know. I've only introduced as
much light as necessary. And in today's world,
in the digital world, most of my photography
is done without the aid of additional lighting because of
the techniques that have now come to pass in digital which enable you
to take maybe two or three images from the same spot, use them -- a technique which is known in some
circles as high dynamic range, HDR. And some cameras have this ability
so that when you click the shutter, instead of getting one image,
you get three, a normal exposure, an underexposure, and an
overexposure, under, normal, over. You combine that range, and
if it's done properly and well and the program is good,
you can in fact get a -- an end result which
is much the same if -- as though you had introduced light. And if it's done badly,
it looks awful. But if it's done properly,
it can be terrific. And that's one of the great
advantages of the jump to digital. Now as I say, in the early
days when -- as -- not -- when I first got involved
in photography, most of it was in black and white. But that was in the era when in
fact it became a lot less expensive to reproduce in color. So as that happened,
obviously I start -- I -- the demand for color photographs
evolved as it did so that now, of course, it's -- nobody dreams of
photographing in black and white, which is sad because I think
still it's a very beautiful medium for the depiction of architecture. And I think that some
of the old classic black and white photographs you
have to look at them clearly. And I still have in my files
photographs of the same subject in color and black and white. And I prefer the black
and whites to the color. And I don't want to -- I am going to show 50 slides,
which I will talk about. I didn't want to start doing that because I get carried
away once we're at the images. And I digress too frequently. But let me say as the color
evolved, I also evolved. In -- when I started
out in photography, many of the architectural
clients that I have -- and my -- most of my clients were
either editorial magazines and that or they were architects. Not many others, I mean, but that's
simply the way it worked out. The particular point, though,
that I wanted to make was that in those early those the -- in the practice of
architecture it was different. There were major architectural firms
that regards interiors as something that they didn't want
to get involved in. Now today's world, I
mean it's very different. It's amazing to compare now
how much that has changed because once architects realized that they were cutting off a major
component or a major potential by excluding themselves from
the interiors, you know, that really didn't make sense. So nowadays it would be unheard of for a major architectural
firm not to tackle interiors. But as that necessity developed,
then so too did the necessity for good documentation
of those interiors. And I have never divided or thought
about architectural photography in terms of interior and exterior. It's all architectural photography,
whether it's inside or outside, although the rules, of
course, are totally different because when you're photographing
an interior, not very many subjects that you have to be inside
when you're photographing them. And of course, the scale
of them is very important. Now I will say that in the days
and up to the early 21st century, my four by five view camera
was the tool that I used for virtually all of my photography. I might do slides in addition,
but the slides were primarily to provide the architect with
the ability to have slide shows in addition to photography that
was used not only for reference, but for possible publication
and other purposes. Now if you think back on it,
the four by five camera produced for many purposes probably
-- it was probably overkill. I mean it gave you
really fantastic quality. You could enlarge these photographs
to great size with no problems. And any of you who have come into photography more recently
will recognize the fact that with certain systems
that are available today that if your end product
is a large-scale mural, you're going to have to
do it very differently than if you were using it
for the projected image. There's a big difference
between those two. And I must say that even today I --
since I am a comparative newcomer to the digital world, and I don't -- I'm not a computer expert by any
means, that the idea that a file has to be totally different depending
on whether it's a projected image or whether it is a printed
image is -- it surprises me. Most of the images that you're
going to see here started life as much bigger files because
the end product at the time that I did them was going to be
a print rather than projection. But these days, architects promote
themselves almost universally via the website. So these are projected images. And when you think about
it, many of the photographs that people take today are -- you take photographs
with your cell phone. You take them -- it doesn't
matter how you take them. You -- you're not sending
prints to your friends. You're sending files that show you with the Lincoln Memorial,
whatever it is. But that's what you do, and
it's fine for that purpose. But when it comes to a
large-scale reproduction, then you have think again. So it means that it's going
to be a little bit different. The slide that you see in front of you is the old shed
roof of Penn Station. Now when I made that
arrangement with Wayman C. Wing, a structural engineer, still
around, still goes into his office, although he's now in his mid-90s,
Wayman C. Wing did the structure for the Washington Hilton Hotel, and I was resident engineer
for part of that work. Prior to that, I had -- when I was
still working for my previous firm, I had -- I had worked where? Well, I had been resident engineer
for the final phase of the redo of the Capitol Dome, which is now -- it's now been so long that that
redo is not being redone yet again. [ Laughter ] So that's how long ago it was. So that came about under
a slightly unfortunate -- not for me, but for one of my
associates because those of you who are not familiar with the
Capitol realize that's it's got an inner and an outer dome
and that between the inner and the outer dome is
this great structure that holds the whole thing up. And then at the base of the
dome, there is this wing, and this is where the
balcony is, at that -- it ties the whole thing together. Well, over the years,
because of poor waterproofing, but also due to the --
due to bird damage, the -- that part of the dome, which structurally held the
thing together, was compromised. This series of laminated
plates had corroded badly. You couldn't replace it
because to replace it you have to take the top of the dome off. That clearly wasn't feasible and would've indicated
weakness on some part. And so -- [ Laughter ] So they -- so the company
devised a method for -- they introduced a series of saddles
around the 36 beams there and put in steel beams or steel cables
and then stressed these cables up and relieved these metal plates
of all the stress and, thus, reintroduced the integrity
of the dome structurally. The reason that I ended
up being there, however, was that my predecessor fell inside
the dome and badly damaged one of his feet and could no
longer continue with that work. So I was lucky enough then
to be his replacement. But in any event, so I was
-- and this era, I might say, was during the era when Richard
Nixon was Vice President. John F. Kennedy had
just been selected to be the Democratic
candidate for the presidency. Lyndon Johnson was either Speaker
of the House, or it was Sam Rayburn. I don't remember the details
of how that all worked. But I had a grandstand seat to
some of the events that occurred in the capital in that era. So my association with Washington, as you can see, goes
back a long way. One sad note was that I was
on my way to Washington, DC, when President Kennedy
was assassinated. And that was a terrible,
terrible time in Washington. But it was even worse for my family because my uncle died
on that same weekend. He -- and he died of pneumonia,
which had been misdiagnosed in the excitement of
everything that was going on and the preoccupation
that everybody had. They didn't diagnose
the sort of pneumonia that he had until it was too late. So that was a very sad thing, but
it was -- it was one of the -- of many Washington events
that occurred that were -- had a major impact on me. When I think back to the
days of film photography, and I had one assignment
in the mid-80s that was a round-the-world
trip to do a -- an annual report for the
Schlumberger Corporation that had headquarters in New
York, Paris, and England. And I had -- because I was going
to many different locations in different parts of the world, I
had 13 separate pieces of baggage. I didn't know what piece of
equipment I was going to need for which part of this job. So I had to take everything with me. When that whole assignment was over, we ended up in some
place like Frankfurt. No, it wasn't. No, I -- we ended up in
Dubai I think it was. And because the representative
from Schlumberger -- we had -- and my assistant -- we had been able
to divide our baggage allowance, and we were traveling
business class. We were -- we could divide
it between three people. Then it was manageable. But at that point, you're going
to different destinations. And we had to divide it between two. So they said, "Okay, that's going
to be $2500 in excess baggage." Well, the Schlumberger
representative had already flown out. So I said, "Well, okay, here's
my American Express card." Well, this exceeded the thing. So there I was on the -- I was
there waiting to get on the plane, and everybody was seated
in the plane. And they said, "Well, you know,
what are we going to do here? We've loaded all the baggage on. He's maxed out his credit card. What are we going to do?" The pilot had to come down
and intercede and say, "Look, accept the damn credit card
and get -- let's get on." [Laughter] And it was
really pretty hilarious. In any event, I -- had I
to do that same job today, I would not have a fraction
of the amount of equipment. This was taken with a -- my first
really sophisticated wide-angle camera was not a view camera. It was a camera that used 120
film, and it had a negative two and a half -- two and
a half inches by three and a half inches,
very, very wide angle. It had a 47 millimeter
super angle on it. And it was really quite something. So this is -- this is
a little bit before. One of the interesting things
about Penn Station that -- first of all, let me point out that
the office of Wayman C. Wing was on Seventh Avenue right
across from Penn Station. Penn Station became a very important
part of my life because I worked across the street from it,
and all I had to do was to go up to the top floor of
the Pennsylvania Hotel, and I could get a bird's eye view
of the hotel -- of the station. The station, of course,
was enormous. This is the part of the
roof structure that you saw from under -- underneath. [Inaudible] suggested that I should
take a course with Alexey Brodovich. Alexey Brodovich was an art
director of Harper's Bazaar. Brodovich was influential to many
of the top photographers of his era. He encouraged us to produce
stories that were unique and that could be discussed
by the class. And my set of topic was in
fact the -- was Penn Station. The demolition of Penn
Station occurred over an almost four-year period, and
during that time, the station had to remain completely operative not
only for commuters but for long -- as a long-distance railroad hub. So this is a view of the
Seventh Avenue facade, which I mean was almost
identical to the western facade with all these eagles
and things like that. This is obviously before
the demolition had started. What I have done more recently,
and this is now a retake on all the images that
I took back in the '60s, but now what I have done is I have
scanned all these images together and made a series of five
composites -- six composites. So this takes up lots
of different elements, some of which are immediately
recognizable, and others are not. And so, this is something that
I've only very recently done. And it's a way of clearly
looking back on some of this early photography. While it does have meaning
as -- simply as a record, I thought that this was a new take and would give it a somewhat
more up-to-date feel. So this is a digital take on
the demolition of the station. So here you see the base
photograph here is an aerial, almost aerial view taken
from the top of the -- of the Pennsylvania Hotel. You have the post office
building at center background. Yeah, that's right. I've got a point there. Don't I? [ Laughter ] >> I knew I nearly forgot something. Yeah. Up here, you've
got the post office. And the base of the
final photograph, this is the Seventh
Avenue side here. Eighth Avenue is there. So I'm -- here I'm looking west. One of my most recent
involvements was -- and we've heard and read
an awful lot about drones. So I thought this is the
way of introducing -- this is a local store in
New York that sells drugs. One of -- one of my fellow
architectural photographers in New York is consultant to
a group of Chicago that comes and does drone photography. So here is a drone, and it's
interesting to speculate. Is, for example, a radio-controlled
model aircraft a drone? Why the definition of -- by some people's definition,
it might be a drone. But it's remotely controlled. Nobody's in it. Anyhow, this is a 5DR or 5DS camera. This -- the span of that
rotor is about six feet. And this is a pretty
complicated piece of equipment. It's got -- it can fly for
maybe 15 minutes at a time. That doesn't sound like much, but in fact actually
it's quite a long time. And what they do is they put this
camera on this cradle at the bottom, which rotates as the plane rises. And once it gets to
a given altitude, they do a 360-degree sweep. And the camera has a full
frame fish eye lens on it. So it doesn't need to take
that many images going around, which you can then get a panorama of
the sort of view that you would get from one of these needle
skyscrapers. One of the things that really
surprised me about this, and you can -- for example, this
-- that photograph up there, you can fly these things in
really very confined spaces. And I mean mind you
it was fairly close to about a $20,000
piece of equipment. But it's -- even in the wind and
stuff, I was amazed at the degree of control that they
could have over things. And -- because I thought
it was pretty scary going up in these narrow spaces. And they insisted that this flight
be done during the lunch hour so that the -- so that the
workers wouldn't be jeopardized. Now don't ask me what
the details of the -- whether they had permits
to do this thing. I will say these guys were
so efficient that they came. They set up. Twenty minutes, they were gone. They had what they
needed, and they were gone. So by the time anybody
could have complained, I think they were long gone. [ Laughter ] And that may be -- that may be
the -- that may be the secret. Now what has -- what happened
very recently is that based on photographs of Penn Station there
has been a new stage production. And this stage production was
partly based on my photography and other photography
of the station. So they had a -- they made
a set here, and the set -- and they project these different
images of the station on the set. So here are the -- here
are the two actors. The two actors in this
production are a photographer who is documenting the
destruction of the station for the Pennsylvania Railroad
and this commuter professor. And they initially have
a rather antagonist feud, but then finally they
become friends. And gradually, the
station disappears. So it was -- they spent so
much money actually on the set that they did -- had nothing
left over for promotion. So unfortunately, I can't
say it was a great success from a financial standpoint. Now we have to do this one here because this was taken while I was
observing one of these drone flights from the top of the W Hotel
just south of Ground Zero. And this, of course, is
what was used for the -- for the [inaudible] lecture. And there, this, of
course, was at dusk. And this is, of course, the -- what
used to be called the Freedom Tower. So here is -- at dusk, here is
this drone that was -- that -- and I will say that the -- it had
to be at least 20 mile an hour wind. And I would not normally
have flown a model plane in that -- in such wind. But these guys took this thing up. They managed to hold it
remarkably sturdy and were able to accomplish their objective. And I got, of course, to have the
benefit of the marvelous panoramas. There's the drone with the
moon in the background. Okay. While we were up there, I
suddenly saw lights begin to appear at the base of One
World Trade Center. They were doing a test,
and apparently, what they have done now is they
can transform the lower part of that building into
an American flag. And I don't -- and it had
-- it hasn't happened since, and this is I think the first
time that anybody could record it. So I was just lucky that I
was there at the right time. Now this is sort of
hot off the press. This is the -- this is
the Calatrava Center. That is part of the PATH
system that is at Ground Zero. Now I'm a great admirer
of Calatrava. This building is very elegant. It cost almost $4 billion,
which I -- you know, it just is
astounding to me. The thing is I find
it oppressively white. [ Laughter ] I mean I feel like I need
snow goggles when I go -- when I go into that
building and that -- it only serves about
60,000 commuters a day. So it doesn't handle anything like
the sort of traffic that you get through Grand Central
Station or anything else. So the -- this is a full-frame
fish eye lens from the same view. Now I don't -- I don't
normally use fish eye lenses for my architectural work, but in
this particular case, it somehow or other captures how this
thing does envelope you. But there is a degree of monotony
about this, quite frankly. And all the structural
elements are all coated with this luscious marble. And I just wonder what -- you know, you just wonder, well
what is this is? This is just a glorified passage. I mean they're going to have
retail stores and stuff. So, you know, you -- it's interesting to
play with these images. And it's an interesting thing
to go see once, maybe twice. But I'm just not quite sure -- [ Laughter ] That for $4 billion
it's worth all the hype. [ Laughter ] Yeah. I mean here -- Yeah. Now here -- here's -- now admittedly, this is a
full-frame fish eye lens. So this is not the
typical view that you get. And you do -- you do see that the
whole of this skyline from one end to another, it's an immense space. But I really feel like
there was a -- I remember just on
PBS the other night, I watched a program -- oh, no. I went to a show with my wife about
-- based on ice fisherman who go, and they -- and you feel like ice
fisherman with orange uniforms and stuff like that
would be more suitable. Now it's impossible not to compare
that transit hub with this one, which is only a ten
minutes' walk away, which is the Fulton
Street Transit Hub, which is infinitely more
-- it's got great variety. It's got -- its materials I
think are very interesting. So here is a view up through
-- from a lower level. This -- that actually -- that ring
there is actually the balustrade around the opening in the floor to
the space that I'm photographing. I mean this is a part of a stairway. And then this is oculus
of the whole thing. And at different times of
day, it looks quite marvelous. I just thought I would just end
with that -- with that slide there. This -- she's on post. She just happened to be there. And I just thought, well, gosh,
that's pretty appropriate. [ Laughter ] So any of you that haven't, I have
not been yet into the museum there. But I think that this design here
and the One World Trade Center -- World Financial Center behind
here, that's well worth visiting. I can't speak for the museum. It's rather expensive. [ Laughter ] In any event, okay, I'm -- I apologize that our slide show for reasons beyond my
control couldn't -- didn't -- is -- was not complete. But you get a hint for I think what
I'm still doing, and those of you who have questions, I'll
try and answer them. [ Applause ] >> Male Speaker: You're shooting
these big fish eye pictures. Is it safe to say that
earlier in your career, you would not have been [inaudible], that you would have always been more
the straightforward architectural -- >> Norman McGrath: Well, what
I'm doing a lot more photography for myself these days, and I -- one of the things that I have
been doing is doing photographs that I call upshots. And for the upshots, I
take -- I will take any -- I will extreme wide-angle
lenses, including fish eye lenses, because that gives you a very
different view, and yet it -- I mean it's reality, but
it's a distorted reality. And it -- you can make very
interesting images I think doing that. But whether you do those as part
of an assignment, I don't know. You would have to have a client
who recognizes that, okay, this is maybe not part
of the documentation but nevertheless is
an interesting take. It's because, you know,
every now and again, that sort of thing will happen. But you have to have
a flexible client. You wouldn't do it
with just any client. Yeah? >> Male Speaker: So it seems
to me that both architecture and photography have become
more classic as we get -- since the advent of purists. And I'm just wondering since
you've bridged this gap in a wonderful way how the
conversation has changed between architects and
architectural photographers. I mean I know that it's easy to
be dictated to by the architect in a certain way, especially as their creations become
more frothy, you know? >> N Yeah. >> Male Speaker: Acrobatic. >> Norman McGrath: Yeah. It's an interesting
point that you bring up. As I mentioned earlier,
many, many architects are -- would be or could be very talented
photographers if they had the time and had the equipment to do it. However, when it comes to the
documentation of their own work, they usually seek out a photographer
with whom they feel compatible and that they understand that once
they have worked with a photographer who has gone out and documented
something that they have done and that they like it, then
they become more trusting. And then they give -- they tend to give the photographer
less and less instruction. And that works usually to both
the benefit of the photographer and the architect because sometimes
an architect doesn't always -- you know, they're so
close to the design that they don't necessarily
see it objectively. You know, it's an interesting thing. And the other I think very
particularly interesting aspect of architectural photography
is which is more important, the quality of the
architecture or the photograph? And that's an interesting
question to pose. And it's surprising that -- and quite a number of instances
you get collections of photographs of the work of a particular
architect without any acknowledgement
of who took those photographs. And yet, they can be -- they can be
widely divergent and very different. I personally find that clients
who give me more direction end up really -- you know, sometimes,
you know, they might say, "Okay, we want it done this way." Okay. You do it that way, but
you also do it your own way too, show them the two, and then
afterwards, you know what? Your way was better? [ Laughter ] Because you're -- you know,
that's really what you do. >> Male Speaker: And in
a way you become a proxy for the first visitor. >> Norman McGrath: Yeah. Yeah. >> Male Speaker: This is the first
experience, and it's a reflection, I imagine, that some architects
don't like held up to them. >> Norman McGrath: Well, maybe not. >> Male Speaker: It's a way of showing whether their
building succeeds or fails. >> Norman McGrath: Yeah. Most architects recognize how
important the documentation of their buildings is because
only a certain proportion of their audience will actually get to see the finished
product in many cases. And therefore, they're
really seeing it -- they're seeing an interpretation
of the design by somebody else. And that person has to
be on the same wavelength for that to be successful. >> Male Speaker: And those
processing [inaudible] now. The building on the left
is skewed to the left. Were you -- do you use the
post [inaudible] software where it just straightens
those buildings up? >> Norman McGrath: I could have. You're talking about this building? >> Male Speaker: Correct. >> Norman McGrath: Yeah. I must admit that I -- one
of the things at Ground Zero that you can't do is use tripods. So I have to -- and using a
tilt shift lens on a camera and keeping it level is tough. I could have corrected
that afterwards. I didn't do so, and I could have. >> Do you -- okay. But do you do that routinely
when you take images? >> If I were -- if I had done
this on assignment for somebody, I certainly would have, yes. >> Male Speaker: Okay, good. That's what -- >> Norman McGrath: Yeah. Yes, those sort of tech -- it
depends on who your audience is. For a general audience,
the point of this is, okay, it's a familiar part
of Manhattan now. And just the inclusion of this
little girl who just rushed into the picture at the
last minute, I said, "Wow, [laughter] I got to get that." >> Female Speaker: Well, I think
you sort of answered this question in a few ways, but I
wanted to ask it again. You used the phrase
documentary a number of times. And so -- and you reference it, and
this is a good example [inaudible]. How much -- you say an
architect might have a vision, and you sort of have a way
that you like to shoot. Is the way that you
like to shoot to -- is it important to you to
have it being documentary so that it's as correct as possible? So you had fun with the fish eye. But as part of your motivation
and the photographs that you take that you would like for it
to be perspective corrected and that you're trying to make it -- >> Norman McGrath: I just start
-- I just -- well, the main -- >> Female Speaker: How
does that [inaudible]? >> Norman McGrath: The main -- yeah. The main objective simply would
be to produce a photograph that is comfortable enough that
the fewer is not preoccupied with the method that has been used to document the thing
in the first place. You know, you -- in other words, when you look at an
architectural photographer -- a photograph, you want
the viewer to say, "Ooh, that's a great looking building. That's terrific." You don't want them to
say, "Wow, I wonder -- that's a marvelous photograph. I wonder how that was done." Then maybe the photographer
has overdone it because then the photograph
itself becomes more important than the subject. And that's a -- that's one of the -- one of the big quandaries with architectural
photography in general. And it's one of the reasons
that architectural photographers in general are not as widely
known to the general public as photographers in
some other fields. Ford? >> Ford Peatross: Has that client
dynamic that you just described over 50 years had any major shifts,
or is it still pretty steady? >> Norman McGrath: Well, it -- I
mean one thing that it has done is that because in fact many even
modest sized architectural firms can afford to go out and buy a $3,000
camera like this and a $2,000 lens, you know, $5,000 sounds
like a lot of money. But if that permits you to
get good quality photographs, then a moderately skilled
photographer who is not necessarily
professional can go out and capture for an architect photographs
which are quite adequate for use on a website or for reference
purposes, not necessarily for publication, but maybe I
mean if they're good enough, they could be for publication too. So that -- I think architects
in general are doing more of their own photography than
has been true in the past. They are doing it now because this
is an infinitely easier to learn how to use and to use than a four
by five view camera ever was. >> Just a note from the
[inaudible], they have to close. >> Oh, they have to close. Okay. >> This is official
[inaudible] continues. I'm the [inaudible]. [ Laughter ] >> Okay. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.
