>> from the library ofcongress in washington, dc. >> ford peatross: goodafternoon, everyone. thank you for coming. on behalf of the princetonphotographs division of the library of congress and its centerfor architecture, design, and engineering, it is mygreat pleasure to welcome you to today's program, anillustrated presentation by the distinguishedamerican architect and photographer, norman mcgrath.
i would like to remind you thatthis event is being videotaped for broadcast on the library'swebsite and other media. we encourage you and theaudience to ask questions and offer comments during thequestion-and-answer period, but please realize that inparticipating in the q&a period, you will be consenting to thelibrary possibly reproducing and transmitting your remarks. perhaps we also should take a momentto thank the roman goddess minerva, the roman goddess ofwisdom and learning,
who presides over this place,who apparently has worked out an accommodation with hersometimes feckless brother mercury, the god of travel andtransportation, so that you all could be here today. my name is ford peatross, and idirect the center for architecture, design, and engineering, whose goalis to further our understanding and appreciation of its subjects. certainly, this is whatnorman mcgrath has done during over five decades as anarchitectural photographer.
i am here today with mycolleague, mari nakahara -- >> mari nakahara: hello. >> ford peatross: our newcurator of architecture, design, and engineering, tointroduce norman, in possibly my last officialprogram introduction before i retire at the end of april afterover 40 years at the library, happily handing over thereins to mari and doing so with total confidence in herabilities to carry on this work. but back to the subjectat hand, born in london,
norman's father was theaustralian born architect and author raymond mcgrath. norman was educated in ireland, where he earned an engineeringdegree at trinity college dublin. thus, how appropriateit is that he is here with us on st. patrick's day. and i see he's wearing a bit o' thegreen, as are a number of people in the audience, and ifailed, and i'm part irish. i don't know how that happened.
after working in dublin for a yearor so as a structural engineer, he moved to new york in 1956. over the next five years, hegradually made the transition into the field of professionalphotography, specializing in architectureand interiors. norman has become one of the bestknown and respected photographers of the world's greatbuildings and architecture. every major architecturalpublication has featured his images. his long career includesa wide variety of work
for many well-knownarchitects and designers. norman is the onlyarchitectural photographer invited to join canon's explorers oflight program, which includes many of the top professionals in a widevariety of photographic specialties. his most popular book,"photographing buildings inside and out", has sold morethan 47,000 copies. for princeton architecturalpress, he co-authored two books, "manhattan skyscrapers" with textby eric nash, published in 1999 with revised editions in 2005 and2010, and "skyscraper rivals",
a book featuring fourearly new york buildings, with text by danielabramson, published in 2000. in 1985, the aia selectednorman for its institute honor, and the new york chapter of theaia awarded him a special citation for photography in 1999. in addition to his assignment work,norman gives seminars and teaches with the maine photographicworkshops and the palm beach photoworkshops and the calumet institute in conjunction with theuniversity of maryland.
in 1995, the aia selectedhim for its institute honor. and i've already talkedabout the special citation. [ laughter ] exhibits of his work includea solo exhibition of his black and white photographsat the royal institute of architects of ireland in 2001. norman contributed aphoto essay to the book "new york's pennsylvania station". it's written by myesteemed colleague,
hillary ballon, andpublished in 2002. this was especially meaningfulbecause norman's first job in architectural photography wasdocumenting the 1963 demolition of mckim, mead, and white'sgreat lost structure, whose fate is still verymuch in the news today. the significance of the station'sdestruction further was made tangible by architectural historianvincent scully's memorable words, quote, "one enteredthe city like a god. one scuttles in nowlike a rat," unquote.
both mcgrath and scully have shownus that architecture does matter. in 2011, norman beganto donate the archive of his professional photographyto the library of congress, rights free, that now includeswell over 100,000 large format film and high resolution digital images. we are fortunate thatnorman will now share a part of his considerable talent,experience, and wisdom in helping us to understand what makesarchitectural photography different. i can think of no one betterqualified for the task.
[ applause ] >> well, thank you very much for those glowing words,and thank you all. it's great to see such alively and full audience here. i'm really honored, inparticular, of course, and i have to wish you alla happy st. patrick's day. when ford gave me the opportunity ofselecting a day in april, of course, he sooner came to today'sdate, the 17th of march. i knew that that'sthe date it had to be.
in any event, so here i am. and thank you, ford, for allthose interesting details about my early life because thatnow means that i don't have to go into too much detail about that. but let me say, of course, that myfather was enormously influential and without fostering the interestin architecture that i gained through him, i wouldnot be where i am today. and you might wonder whyit is that, for example, i did not study architecturein the first place.
and it so happens thattrinity college dublin, where most of my education wasfunneled in the early '50s, has no school of -- ithas all the major schools, but no school of architecture. so you cannot study -- inother words, if you go -- if you interview an irish architectand asked him where he studied, he's certainly not going tosay trinity college, dublin, because it has no school. so i did what i thoughtwas the next best thing,
and as a structuralengineer, of course, structural engineers workwith architects closely. and they are the ones thatmake the buildings stand up, make the dreams come true. and so, they play an important role. one of the things, however, that engineering trainingnormally lacks is any emphasis on the aesthetics of things. and so, it's -- that is usually --
when you get reallyelaborate structures, that's left to those few engineerswho really have the imagination to see how marvelousthese structures can be, people like calatrava, for example, and luigi nervi beforehim, and so on. and -- but they are unusual,and they are standouts. and -- but i wanted to dwell on thefact that architectural photography as a field of endeavor is differentthan other fields of photography. why is that?
part of the reason is that we areall very familiar with the subject, what it looks like, and if thephotograph doesn't look the same way the structure does,we feel uncomfortable. i am -- i used to constantly gripeabout the fact that, for example, when i picked up the real estatesection of the new york times that very frequently the buildings that i saw depicted therewere very, very distorted. they were taken withwide-angle lenses, and clearly the photographershad tilted their cameras back.
and these buildingslooked like pyramids more than the rectangular subjectsthat they in fact were. and i often wondered why theyaccepted that, because i knew that they -- it didn'thave to be that way. the new york times didn't have and still doesn't have manyphotographers who are really gifted in the documentationof architecture. they have a couple, but that's nottheir -- normally their main thrust. so one of the aspectsthen is to somehow
or other determine what it isthat making the documentation of architecture such a challenge. and in the early days ofarchitectural photography, most of it was exterior initially. the lenses that most photographersused were fairly long focal lengths lenses. in other words, you stoodback from your subject. and because these were longerfocal length lenses, the -- you did not get the samedepth that is possible
when you approach yoursubject more closely and photograph it witha wider angle lens. this is true of bothinteriors and exteriors. and this is a factor which reallycomes 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, becausei didn't take any photographs until after i graduatedfrom college. and at that point,i decided i was --
i knew that i wantedto come to america. and i thought, well, you know,i'm going to document a little bit of what dublin is all about sothat when i come to america, i can show my american relativeswhat ireland is all about. and indeed, i am -- even beforei came here, i was half-american, because my mother wasfrom dallas, texas. so it was really becauseof my american grandfather, whom i met as a child,that i had decided a long, long time ago that i wantedto come and live in america.
i mean i really literally made that when i was stilla very young person. and so, the sort of die was cast. in any event, when i got intothe field of photography first, on graduation, my best friendwas given a graduation present of a brand-new camera, andi bought his old camera. and that was the camerathat i started out with, which was a 35-millimeterrange finder camera, very straightforward,rather awkward to use.
every time you changed -- ithad interchangeable lenses, but every time you changedthe lens, you had to put on a separate viewfinder becauseit wasn't a reflex camera. so it was very, very tedious,completely unlike today's cameras, which make life so easythat you not only don't have to know what the settings meanor say, you know, it does it all. now, not all cameras,but many of them do. so in the -- one had to learnthe hard way by trial and error. and because of my interestin architecture,
a lot of the photographs that i initially took werearchitectural in nature. and i quickly foundwhat a challenge it was. and i came to america. i worked as -- forfour 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, slowdecline due the death of principle partners in the firm.
and at that point, they --you know, they had been one of the top ten consultingfirms 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, isaid, "do i really want to be a structural engineerfor the rest of my life?", because i had been finding that,
although engineeringwas interesting, it wasn't as creativeas architecture was. it just lacked that extrathing for me at that point. so i decided, okay, i'm goingto have a fling at photography. i'd been becoming an increasinglyinvolved amateur at that point. i'm talking now about thelate '50s, early '60s. and so, i went out, bought myselfa four by five view camera. i already had determinedthat the tool of choice in that era was a four by fiveview camera, and if i was going
to be serious about the subject, ihad to have one of those cameras. well, there weren't very manyplaces to learn how to do that. so it was a lot ofquestion of trial and error. and in those early days, i actuallyspent quite a bit of time here in washington, dc, as what can bedescribed by my old friends here, the luces [assumedspelling], whom i meet today for the first time in 53 years. 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 veryfriendly with a couple of washington architects,one of whom, a man named tad dynelle [assumedspelling], was very interested in a book on georgetownarchitecture. so i would come down, and i wouldgo out with tad with my by four by five view cameraand document all of -- all the famous houses ingeorgetown from that era. and we -- i even had i thinkprobably the first exhibition
of photography was somethingthat tad had organized in promotion of that idea. sadly, the book nevercame to fruition. but it was a very goodway of cutting my teeth. in any event, not long after ihad made this decision to get into the field, i got a call fromone of the engineers who had been in the firm that i had also been in, and he said he hadleft the firm too. and he was one of the associatesand had founded his own firm.
and on the strengthof his major client, which was the intercontinentalhotels, he was looking for employees. and he said, "norman, i hear you'reinterested in getting into the field of architectural photography. are you also interested in eating?" and that was becomingrather pertinent. so i decided, yes,that that was something that i was interested in doing.
and i managed to make a -- an arrangement with himwhere i worked part time. now that meant that i no longerhad to rely on any income, which was pretty minimumin the initial stages. i had also decided that the wayto get a foothold in the field of architectural photographywas to try and get publicationas much as possible. and in those -- in those days, there were four majorarchitectural magazines.
it's amazing to thinkthat of those four, only one still exists,architectural record. none of the others, architecturalplus, progressive architecture, they're all gone by the [inaudible]. now these were magazines that iworked for on a regular basis. i knew the people there. i would photograph a lotof things on speculation, bring them to their attention. sometimes i would get assignmentsthen to go back and do them again.
one such assignment idid was on the way back from washington, dc, to new york. i stopped in baltimore, and itwas just after the completion of the one charles center by miesvan 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, andi called up architecture forum, and i said, "by any chance, wouldyou be interested in photographs of the new charles center?" and they looked atme, and they said,
"we just sent back aphotographer for the second time and has produced absolutelyunusable material. are we interested?" well, not only didthey get featured. they got on the coverof the magazine, and i got assignmentsfrom mies's office. i never met -- got to meet mies, buti got assignments from his office. and i met associatesfrom his office. and that was -- you know, thatwas a tremendous piece of luck.
another thing that happenedhere in washington, dc, was that back in the early'60s, interiors magazine decided to do a feature on washingtonarchitects and interiors for the national conventionof the nsid. and that was edited by a ladynamed olga geft [assumed spelling]. this magazine had absolutelyno money. i don't know how they everput that magazine out. and so, most of the time,olga would take the pictures. and she was a prettygood photographer,
but she really didn't have the time because she was runningthe magazine as well. so what she would do isshe would say, "look, i want to go feature this building." and so, she would twist the armsof the architects of the buildings to employ me to take thepictures, and i would do that. and that's how i metmany of my early contacts in the washington, dc, area. and then i -- a lotof the -- of that --
i think it was 1963 vintageedition featured my work and -- in washington, dc. and it was, you know, another wayof -- that luck played a part. but i interrupted myselfa little bit. one of the things that i -- wheni got into the field early on, wide-angle lens photographywas in its -- i mean it was still avery developing field. i felt, especially with interiors,that when you got into an interior that you -- that youneeded to do that.
and in order to do that, you needed to have a fairly wide fieldto capture the interior. but you had to do thatvery carefully because if you don't thepicture gets very distorted and uncomfortable. so you -- it's always a compromise. the job of -- or what itboils down to in many cases is that you are trying to disguisethe fact that you've used as wide a focus length lens or asshort a focal length that you have
to give you the coveragethat you want without making it look distorted. you want to get -- you want to sort of capture what it'slike to be in the space. and also, you want to -- ifyou have to introduce lighting into that space, doso very carefully, because if it's obvious,i think it detracts. i -- and this is particularlytrue in today's -- in a more sophisticated era whenmost interiors, be they domestic
or otherwise, involve lightingconsultants and so on so that most of them are well lit and they don'tneed a lot of supplemental lighting. so if somebody looks at a photographof mine and says did i light it or not, then i feel i'vesucceeded because they don't know. i've only introduced asmuch light as necessary. and in today's world,in the digital world, most of my photographyis done without the aid of additional lighting because ofthe techniques that have now come to pass in digital which enable youto take maybe two or three images
from the same spot, use them -- a technique which is known in somecircles as high dynamic range, hdr. and some cameras have this abilityso that when you click the shutter, instead of getting one image,you get three, a normal exposure, an underexposure, and anoverexposure, under, normal, over. you combine that range, andif it's done properly and well and the program is good,you can in fact get a -- an end result whichis 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 greatadvantages of the jump to digital. now as i say, in the earlydays when -- as -- not -- when i first got involvedin photography, most of it was in black and white. but that was in the era when infact it became a lot less expensive to reproduce in color. so as that happened,obviously i start -- i --
the demand for color photographsevolved as it did so that now, of course, it's -- nobody dreams ofphotographing in black and white, which is sad because i thinkstill it's a very beautiful medium for the depiction of architecture. and i think that someof the old classic black and white photographs youhave to look at them clearly. and i still have in my filesphotographs of the same subject in color and black and white. and i prefer the blackand 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 carriedaway once we're at the images. and i digress too frequently. but let me say as the colorevolved, i also evolved. in -- when i startedout in photography, many of the architecturalclients that i have -- and my -- most of my clients wereeither editorial magazines
and that or they were architects. not many others, i mean, but that'ssimply the way it worked out. the particular point, though,that i wanted to make was that in those early those the -- in the practice ofarchitecture it was different. there were major architectural firmsthat regards interiors as something that they didn't wantto get involved in. now today's world, imean it's very different. it's amazing to compare nowhow much that has changed
because once architects realized that they were cutting off a majorcomponent or a major potential by excluding themselves fromthe interiors, you know, that really didn't make sense. so nowadays it would be unheard of for a major architecturalfirm not to tackle interiors. but as that necessity developed,then so too did the necessity for good documentationof those interiors. and i have never divided or thoughtabout architectural photography
in terms of interior and exterior. it's all architectural photography,whether it's inside or outside, although the rules, ofcourse, are totally different because when you're photographingan interior, not very many subjects that you have to be insidewhen you're photographing them. and of course, the scaleof them is very important. now i will say that in the daysand up to the early 21st century, my four by five view camerawas 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 withthe ability to have slide shows in addition to photography thatwas used not only for reference, but for possible publicationand 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 youreally fantastic quality. you could enlarge these photographsto great size with no problems. and any of you who have come
into photography more recentlywill recognize the fact that with certain systemsthat are available today that if your end productis a large-scale mural, you're going to have todo it very differently than if you were using itfor the projected image. there's a big differencebetween 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 anymeans, that the idea that a file has
to be totally different dependingon whether it's a projected image or whether it is a printedimage is -- it surprises me. most of the images that you'regoing to see here started life as much bigger files becausethe end product at the time that i did them was going to bea print rather than projection. but these days, architects promotethemselves almost universally via the website. so these are projected images. and when you think aboutit, many of the photographs
that people take today are -- you take photographswith your cell phone. you take them -- it doesn'tmatter how you take them. you -- you're not sendingprints to your friends. you're sending files that show you with the lincoln memorial,whatever it is. but that's what you do, andit's fine for that purpose. but when it comes to alarge-scale reproduction, then you have think again.
so it means that it's goingto be a little bit different. the slide that you see in front of you is the old shedroof of penn station. now when i made thatarrangement with wayman c. wing, a structural engineer, stillaround, 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 engineerfor part of that work. prior to that, i had -- when i wasstill working for my previous firm,
i had -- i had worked where? well, i had been resident engineerfor the final phase of the redo of the capitol dome, which is now -- it's now been so long that thatredo is not being redone yet again. so that's how long ago it was. so that came about undera slightly unfortunate -- not for me, but for one of myassociates because those of you who are not familiar with thecapitol realize that's it's got an inner and an outer domeand that between the inner
and the outer dome isthis great structure that holds the whole thing up. and then at the base of thedome, there is this wing, and this is where thebalcony 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 thething together, was compromised.
this series of laminatedplates had corroded badly. you couldn't replace itbecause to replace it you have to take the top of the dome off. that clearly wasn't feasible and would've indicatedweakness on some part. and so -- so they -- so the companydevised a method for -- they introduced a series of saddlesaround the 36 beams there and put in steel beams or steel cablesand then stressed these cables up
and relieved these metal platesof all the stress and, thus, reintroduced the integrityof the dome structurally. the reason that i endedup being there, however, was that my predecessor fell insidethe dome and badly damaged one of his feet and could nolonger continue with that work. so i was lucky enough thento be his replacement. but in any event, so i was-- and this era, i might say, was during the era when richardnixon was vice president. john f. kennedy hadjust been selected
to be the democraticcandidate for the presidency. lyndon johnson was either speakerof the house, or it was sam rayburn. i don't remember the detailsof how that all worked. but i had a grandstand seat tosome of the events that occurred in the capital in that era. so my association with washington, as you can see, goesback a long way. one sad note was that i wason my way to washington, dc, when president kennedywas assassinated.
and that was a terrible,terrible time in washington. but it was even worse for my family because my uncle diedon that same weekend. he -- and he died of pneumonia,which had been misdiagnosed in the excitement ofeverything that was going on and the preoccupationthat everybody had. they didn't diagnosethe sort of pneumonia that he had until it was too late. so that was a very sad thing, butit was -- it was one of the --
of many washington eventsthat occurred that were -- had a major impact on me. when i think back to thedays of film photography, and i had one assignmentin the mid-80s that was a round-the-worldtrip to do a -- an annual report for theschlumberger corporation that had headquarters in newyork, paris, and england. and i had -- because i was goingto many different locations in different parts of the world, ihad 13 separate pieces of baggage.
i didn't know what piece ofequipment 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 someplace like frankfurt. no, it wasn't. no, i -- we ended up indubai i think it was. and because the representativefrom schlumberger -- we had -- and my assistant -- we had been ableto divide our baggage allowance,
and we were travelingbusiness class. we were -- we could divideit between three people. then it was manageable. but at that point, you're goingto different destinations. and we had to divide it between two. so they said, "okay, that's goingto be $2500 in excess baggage." well, the schlumbergerrepresentative had already flown out. so i said, "well, okay, here'smy american express card."
well, this exceeded the thing. so there i was on the -- i wasthere waiting to get on the plane, and everybody was seatedin 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 downand intercede and say, "look, accept the damn credit cardand get -- let's get on."
[laughter] and it wasreally pretty hilarious. in any event, i -- had ito do that same job today, i would not have a fractionof the amount of equipment. this was taken with a -- my firstreally sophisticated wide-angle camera was not a view camera. it was a camera that used 120film, and it had a negative two and a half -- two anda half inches by three and a half inches,very, very wide angle. it had a 47 millimetersuper angle on it.
and it was really quite something. so this is -- this isa little bit before. one of the interesting thingsabout penn station that -- first of all, let me point out thatthe office of wayman c. wing was on seventh avenue rightacross from penn station. penn station became a very importantpart 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 ofthe pennsylvania hotel, and i could get a bird's eye viewof the hotel -- of the station.
the station, of course,was enormous. this is the part of theroof structure that you saw from under -- underneath. [inaudible] suggested that i shouldtake a course with alexey brodovich. alexey brodovich was an artdirector of harper's bazaar. brodovich was influential to manyof the top photographers of his era. he encouraged us to producestories that were unique and that could be discussedby the class. and my set of topic was infact the -- was penn station.
the demolition of pennstation occurred over an almost four-year period, andduring that time, the station had to remain completely operative notonly for commuters but for long -- as a long-distance railroad hub. so this is a view of theseventh avenue facade, which i mean was almostidentical to the western facade with all these eaglesand things like that. this is obviously beforethe demolition had started. what i have done more recently,and this is now a retake
on all the images thati took back in the '60s, but now what i have done is i havescanned all these images together and made a series of fivecomposites -- six composites. so this takes up lotsof different elements, some of which are immediatelyrecognizable, and others are not. and so, this is something thati've only very recently done. and it's a way of clearlylooking back on some of this early photography. while it does have meaningas -- simply as a record,
i thought that this was a new take and would give it a somewhatmore up-to-date feel. so this is a digital take onthe demolition of the station. so here you see the basephotograph here is an aerial, almost aerial view takenfrom the top of the -- of the pennsylvania hotel. you have the post officebuilding at center background. yeah, that's right. i've got a point there.
don't i? >> i knew i nearly forgot something. yeah. up here, you'vegot the post office. and the base of thefinal photograph, this is the seventhavenue side here. eighth avenue is there. so i'm -- here i'm looking west. one of my most recentinvolvements was -- and we've heard and readan awful lot about drones.
so i thought this is theway of introducing -- this is a local store innew york that sells drugs. one of -- one of my fellowarchitectural photographers in new york is consultant toa group of chicago that comes and does drone photography. so here is a drone, and it'sinteresting to speculate. is, for example, a radio-controlledmodel 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 thatrotor is about six feet. and this is a prettycomplicated piece of equipment. it's got -- it can fly formaybe 15 minutes at a time. that doesn't sound like much, but in fact actuallyit's quite a long time. and what they do is they put thiscamera on this cradle at the bottom,
which rotates as the plane rises. and once it gets toa given altitude, they do a 360-degree sweep. and the camera has a fullframe fish eye lens on it. so it doesn't need to takethat many images going around, which you can then get a panorama ofthe sort of view that you would get from one of these needleskyscrapers. one of the things that reallysurprised me about this, and you can -- for example, this-- that photograph up there,
you can fly these things inreally very confined spaces. and i mean mind youit was fairly close to about a $20,000piece of equipment. but it's -- even in the wind andstuff, i was amazed at the degree of control that theycould have over things. and -- because i thoughtit was pretty scary going up in these narrow spaces. and they insisted that this flightbe done during the lunch hour so that the -- so that theworkers wouldn't be jeopardized.
now don't ask me whatthe details of the -- whether they had permitsto do this thing. i will say these guys wereso efficient that they came. they set up. twenty minutes, they were gone. they had what theyneeded, and they were gone. so by the time anybodycould have complained, i think they were long gone. and that may be -- that may bethe -- that may be the secret.
now what has -- what happenedvery recently is that based on photographs of penn station therehas been a new stage production. and this stage production waspartly based on my photography and other photographyof the station. so they had a -- they madea set here, and the set -- and they project these differentimages of the station on the set. so here are the -- hereare the two actors. the two actors in thisproduction are a photographer who is documenting thedestruction of the station
for the pennsylvania railroadand this commuter professor. and they initially havea rather antagonist feud, but then finally theybecome friends. and gradually, thestation disappears. so it was -- they spent somuch money actually on the set that they did -- had nothingleft over for promotion. so unfortunately, i can'tsay it was a great success from a financial standpoint. now we have to do this one here
because this was taken while i wasobserving one of these drone flights from the top of the w hoteljust south of ground zero. and this, of course, iswhat was used for the -- for the [inaudible] lecture. and there, this, ofcourse, was at dusk. and this is, of course, the -- whatused to be called the freedom tower. so here is -- at dusk, here isthis drone that was -- that -- and i will say that the -- it hadto be at least 20 mile an hour wind. and i would not normallyhave flown a model plane
in that -- in such wind. but these guys took this thing up. they managed to hold itremarkably sturdy and were able to accomplish their objective. and i got, of course, to have thebenefit of the marvelous panoramas. there's the drone with themoon in the background. okay. while we were up there, isuddenly saw lights begin to appear at the base of oneworld trade center. they were doing a test,and apparently,
what they have done now is theycan transform the lower part of that building intoan american flag. and i don't -- and it had-- it hasn't happened since, and this is i think the firsttime that anybody could record it. so i was just lucky that iwas there at the right time. now this is sort ofhot off the press. this is the -- this isthe calatrava center. that is part of the pathsystem that is at ground zero. now i'm a great admirerof calatrava.
this building is very elegant. it cost almost $4 billion,which i -- you know, it just isastounding to me. the thing is i findit oppressively white. i mean i feel like i needsnow goggles when i go -- when i go into thatbuilding and that -- it only serves about60,000 commuters a day. so it doesn't handle anything likethe sort of traffic that you get through grand centralstation or anything else.
so the -- this is a full-framefish eye lens from the same view. now i don't -- i don'tnormally use fish eye lenses for my architectural work, but inthis particular case, it somehow or other captures how thisthing does envelope you. but there is a degree of monotonyabout this, quite frankly. and all the structuralelements are all coated with this luscious marble. and i just wonder what -- you know, you just wonder, wellwhat is this is?
this is just a glorified passage. i mean they're going to haveretail stores and stuff. so, you know, you -- it's interesting toplay with these images. and it's an interesting thingto go see once, maybe twice. but i'm just not quite sure -- that for $4 billionit's worth all the hype. yeah. i mean here -- yeah. now here -- here's --
now admittedly, this is afull-frame fish eye lens. so this is not thetypical view that you get. and you do -- you do see that thewhole of this skyline from one end to another, it's an immense space. but i really feel likethere was a -- i remember just onpbs 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 icefisherman with orange uniforms
and stuff like thatwould be more suitable. now it's impossible not to comparethat transit hub with this one, which is only a tenminutes' walk away, which is the fultonstreet transit hub, which is infinitely more-- it's got great variety. it's got -- its materials ithink are very interesting. so here is a view up through-- from a lower level. this -- that actually -- that ringthere is actually the balustrade around the opening in the floor tothe space that i'm photographing.
i mean this is a part of a stairway. and then this is oculusof the whole thing. and at different times ofday, it looks quite marvelous. i just thought i would just endwith 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. so any of you that haven't, i havenot been yet into the museum there. but i think that this design hereand the one world trade center --
world financial center behindhere, that's well worth visiting. i can't speak for the museum. it's rather expensive. in any event, okay, i'm -- i apologize that our slide show for reasons beyond mycontrol couldn't -- didn't -- is -- was not complete. but you get a hint for i think whati'm still doing, and those of you who have questions, i'lltry and answer them.
>> male speaker: you're shootingthese big fish eye pictures. is it safe to say thatearlier in your career, you would not have been [inaudible], that you would have always been morethe straightforward architectural -- >> norman mcgrath: well, whati'm doing a lot more photography for myself these days, and i -- one of the things that i havebeen doing is doing photographs that i call upshots. and for the upshots, itake -- i will take any --
i will extreme wide-anglelenses, including fish eye lenses, because that gives you a verydifferent view, and yet it -- i mean it's reality, butit's a distorted reality. and it -- you can make veryinteresting images i think doing that. but whether you do those as partof an assignment, i don't know. you would have to have a clientwho recognizes that, okay, this is maybe not partof the documentation but nevertheless isan interesting take.
it's because, you know,every now and again, that sort of thing will happen. but you have to havea flexible client. you wouldn't do itwith just any client. yeah? >> male speaker: so it seemsto me that both architecture and photography have becomemore classic as we get -- since the advent of purists. and i'm just wondering sinceyou've bridged this gap
in a wonderful way how theconversation has changed between architects andarchitectural photographers. i mean i know that it's easy tobe dictated to by the architect in a certain way, especially as their creations becomemore frothy, you know? >> n yeah. >> male speaker: acrobatic. >> norman mcgrath: yeah. it's an interestingpoint that you bring up.
as i mentioned earlier,many, many architects are -- would be or could be very talentedphotographers if they had the time and had the equipment to do it. however, when it comes to thedocumentation of their own work, they usually seek out a photographerwith whom they feel compatible and that they understand that oncethey have worked with a photographer who has gone out and documentedsomething that they have done and that they like it, thenthey become more trusting. and then they give -- they tend
to give the photographerless and less instruction. and that works usually to boththe benefit of the photographer and the architect because sometimesan architect doesn't always -- you know, they're soclose to the design that they don't necessarilysee it objectively. you know, it's an interesting thing. and the other i think veryparticularly interesting aspect of architectural photographyis which is more important, the quality of thearchitecture or the photograph?
and that's an interestingquestion to pose. and it's surprising that -- and quite a number of instancesyou get collections of photographs of the work of a particulararchitect without any acknowledgementof who took those photographs. and yet, they can be -- they can bewidely divergent and very different. i personally find that clientswho 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, butyou also do it your own way too, show them the two, and thenafterwards, you know what? your way was better? because you're -- you know,that's really what you do. >> male speaker: and ina way you become a proxy for the first visitor. yeah. >> male speaker: this is the firstexperience, and it's a reflection, i imagine, that some architectsdon't like held up to them.
>> norman mcgrath: well, maybe not. >> male speaker: it's a way of showing whether theirbuilding succeeds or fails. most architects recognize howimportant the documentation of their buildings is becauseonly a certain proportion of their audience will actually get to see the finishedproduct in many cases. and therefore, they'rereally seeing it -- they're seeing an interpretationof the design by somebody else.
and that person has tobe on the same wavelength for that to be successful. >> male speaker: and thoseprocessing [inaudible] now. the building on the leftis skewed to the left. were you -- do you use thepost [inaudible] software where it just straightensthose buildings up? >> norman mcgrath: i could have. you're talking about this building? >> male speaker: correct.
i must admit that i -- oneof the things at ground zero that you can't do is use tripods. so i have to -- and using atilt shift lens on a camera and keeping it level is tough. i could have correctedthat afterwards. i didn't do so, and i could have. >> do you -- okay. but do you do that routinelywhen you take images? >> if i were -- if i had donethis on assignment for somebody,
i certainly would have, yes. >> male speaker: okay, good. that's what -- yes, those sort of tech -- itdepends on who your audience is. for a general audience,the point of this is, okay, it's a familiar partof manhattan now. and just the inclusion of thislittle girl who just rushed into the picture at thelast minute, i said, "wow, [laughter] i got to get that."
>> female speaker: well, i thinkyou sort of answered this question in a few ways, but iwanted to ask it again. you used the phrasedocumentary a number of times. and so -- and you reference it, andthis is a good example [inaudible]. how much -- you say anarchitect might have a vision, and you sort of have a waythat you like to shoot. is the way that youlike to shoot to -- is it important to you tohave it being documentary so that it's as correct as possible?
so you had fun with the fish eye. but as part of your motivationand the photographs that you take that you would like for itto be perspective corrected and that you're trying to make it -- >> norman mcgrath: i just start-- i just -- well, the main -- >> female speaker: howdoes that [inaudible]? >> norman mcgrath: the main -- yeah. the main objective simply wouldbe to produce a photograph that is comfortable enough thatthe fewer is not preoccupied
with the method that has been used to document the thingin the first place. you know, you -- in other words, when you look at anarchitectural photographer -- a photograph, you wantthe viewer to say, "ooh, that's a great looking building. that's terrific." you don't want them tosay, "wow, i wonder -- that's a marvelous photograph.
i wonder how that was done." then maybe the photographerhas overdone it because then the photographitself becomes more important than the subject. and that's a -- that's one of the -- one of the big quandaries with architecturalphotography in general. and it's one of the reasonsthat architectural photographers in general are not as widelyknown to the general public
as photographers insome other fields. ford? >> ford peatross: has that clientdynamic that you just described over 50 years had any major shifts,or is it still pretty steady? >> norman mcgrath: well, it -- imean one thing that it has done is that because in fact many evenmodest sized architectural firms can afford to go out and buy a $3,000camera like this and a $2,000 lens, you know, $5,000 soundslike a lot of money. but if that permits you toget good quality photographs,
then a moderately skilledphotographer who is not necessarilyprofessional can go out and capture for an architect photographswhich are quite adequate for use on a website or for referencepurposes, not necessarily for publication, but maybe imean if they're good enough, they could be for publication too. so that -- i think architectsin general are doing more of their own photography thanhas been true in the past. they are doing it now because thisis an infinitely easier to learn how
to use and to use than a fourby 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]. >> okay. >> this has been a presentationof the library of congress. visit us at loc.gov.