NZ visual diary - entry 13

intrigue & oddity - Viaduct Harbour

If I am recognised as a photographer for a distinctive style, it would not be edgy. I am not in the film noir camp, although I do love that movie genre.

I elected to convey an edgy mood in this image to reflect my ambivalence about modern architecture. Proper architectural historians will correct me, but I attribute to Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, among others, a defining feature of modern architecture:

a visual dialogue between the inside/out and the outside/in.

The style embraces a mutual voyeurism - those inside have an unimpeded view of the spaces beyond glass walls and the unsuspecting public is party to a metaphoric full monty.

Like so many daytime television shows, the lines between public and private are blurred, with celebratory intention and perhaps equal parts discomfort.

I think back to an article I read about the spontaneous protests lodged by apartment dwellers along NYC's High Line after the legacy train line was restored as pedestrian thoroughfare. In response to the unwelcomed intrusion upon their private, but exposed, living spaces, some tenants expressed vividly their naked outrage to hapless passers-by.