Devolved Centerlines

DEVOLVED CENTERLINES WEST BOTTOMS PHOTO ESSAY SARAH MURPHY FA2010 - KCDC

INTRODUCTION:

Photography has the ability to capture what we see, crop it (by removing both periphery and sequence), order it (through the creation of tight, meaningful instances) and present itself (allowing us the attention span to interpolate the surrounding moments or scenes). The moments here are stills isolated from the experience of walking and biking through a city that is, in character, devolved or degenerative. The city itself seems to exist sans-inhabitants; it is a place where people are seen in the context of large forms (drivers in or among their big rigs, people opening doors obviously not intended for human use) and therefore writes its own story, its own drama, independent of the humans who created it or dwell within it.

At this massive scale--the scales of industrialism and urban design--how can we take the features which fit within the viewfinder and re-create a city from them?

How can we use these features to understand in what context open space lies? Partially informed by Kyle Rogler and Jared Nook’s academic parsing of void space in the West Bottoms, partially by Treib’s The Presence of Absence, this collection explores the balance between built and unbuilt.

01. DEVOLVED CENTERLINES The character of the West Bottoms is that of a reversal of figure and ground. According to Trieb, “while we read certain urban open spaces as positives, we read others as voids.” (1) The weight of the photos, like the weight of this city is not on the centroid of the mass, but rather on the center line of the void. The sky is the quintessential flat background with an infinite focal range, given depth only by clouds and gradient. The gaps in the urban grid are marked with this neutrality.

If it is the space that is the figure and the forms that are the ground, it becomes unclear whether the autonomous forms of the stand-alone buildings are for containing the program within or serve only our public urbanism, filling the role of bounding facades.

1. Treib, Marc. “The Presence of Absence: Places by Extraction” in Places vol. 4, no. 3 (1987): 15.

two facades - james street f/4; 1/60s; ISO 400 focal length: 50mm camera: Nikon D50

f/18; 1/60s; ISO 400 focal length: 14-42@24mm camera: Olympus E-410

f/22; 1/200s; ISO 400 focal length: 14-42@42mm camera: Olympus E-410

st. louis ave f/18; 1/250; ISO400 focal length 14-42@35mm camera: Olympus E-410

alley to central f/8; 1/250s; ISO 400 focal length: 14-42@42mm camera: olympus E-410

1100 block of hickory f/18; 1/40s; ISO 400 focal length: w14-42@42 camera: olympus E-410

f/13; 1/125s; ISO 400 focal length: 14-42@42mm camera: Olympus E-410

two semis, st. louis ave. f/13; 1/125; ISO 400 focal length 14-42@42mm camera: Olympus E-410

faultless tank f/8; 1/250; ISO 400 focal length: 14-42@31mm camera: olympus E-410

02. INFRASTRUCTURE

Infrastructure commands the deleted space. In plan, bridges and viaducts are figures with right-of-way ground to either side. Spatially, they serve as frames and permeable boundaries. “Geometry is not taken as a pure abstraction but becomes instead an abstract ordering tempered by the particularities of the site’s topography” (2). Here the geometries themselves are the peculiarities of the site, bending around built context and forcing all new spaces to bend along with the most dynamic element.

2. Treib, Marc. “Presence of Absence,” 10.

NEXT PAGE: 12th st viaduct f/18; 1/125s; ISO 400 focal length: 14-42@42 camera: Olympus E-410

PREVIOUS SPREAD, left: 12th st viaduct f/18; 1/125s; ISO 400 focal length: 14-42@42 camera: Olympus E-410 PREVIOUS SPREAD, right: james viaduct f/4.0; 1/60s; ISO 400 focal length: 50 camera: Nikon D50

LEFT: Standard Seed f/8; 1/250s; ISO 400 focal length: 14-42@31mm camera: Olympus E-410

RIGHT: 670 f/10; 1/125s; ISO 400 focal length: 14-42@42 camera: Olympus E-410 I-70 at Santa Fe f/8.0; 1/250s; ISO 800 focal length: 14-42@14 camera: Olympus E-410

03. SPLIT FRAME

The deletions and appendices serve as both frames and portals, allowing the viewer to choose from and experience multiple spatial situations simultaneously.

This emphasizes the quality of sub-city and feeling of discovery (already present for so many spending time in the West Bottoms), creating a cinematic experience that changes with each new step, direction, and decision.

Here, the combination of loading dock porches and grids askew creates diagonal connections across the site--a matter of a few steps reveals a hidden scene. While this is true in all photography (the still is a nonrepresentative image of a larger situation), the Bottoms seems unaware of its capacity to confound. Here, these architectural tricks and spatial play are givens, not contrived constructions.

RIGHT: under 670 at liberty f/9.4; 1/1000s; ISO 800 focal length: 50mm camera: Nikon D50

FOLLORWING SPREAD, left: porch-through f/22; 1/200s; ISO 400 focal length: 14-42@42mm CAMERA: olympus E-410

union and hickory f/4.8; 1/90s; ISO 400 focal length: 50mm camera: Nikon D50

8th and mulberry f/3.5; 1/3200s; ISO 800 focal length: 14-42@14mm camera: Olympus E-410

liberty and 13th f/22; 1/125s; ISO 400 focal length: 14-42@42mm camera: Olympus E-410

04. VANTAGE POINT

The space between 8 storey solid forms invites us to use void, not buildings as the reference point we rotate ourselves around. “The void induces us to participate in ways that the solid cannot.” (3). The void changes itself as we move in ways that something we understand as prismatic and static cannot. It is the quality of openness that we have defined as particular to the West Bottoms, and one of the greatest sources of potential: how to program and define space without losing its everchanging dynamism.

3. Treib, Marc. “Presence of Absence,” 18.