Images of New York: methods of picture analysis
Can you crack the visual codes of pictures?

Professeur Marie-Madeleine MARTINET

Photograph taken with a 40 mm lens

keys for a present-day Gold Bug

The theory will be found in Villes en visite virtuelle

Finding the answers requires raising the right questions first, and here are five of them:

ELEVATION OR PERSPECTIVE?

The choice is obviously important in cities whose image relies on a skyline of skyscrapers (though only a small proportion of its buildings are actually skyscrapers).

Around 1930 (when the major skyscrapers such as the Chrysler and the Empire State Building were competing for the title of ‘’tallest building in the world ‘’), numerous artists selected to give views of them as close as possible to the elevation, with parallel lines placing these examples of extreme modernity in the timeless classical tradition of architectural draughtsmanship.

The perspective presentation on the contrary is more frequent in recent views.

It is possible in photography either

• to have a result close to the elevation, by reducing the convergence of lines with a telelens

• or conversely to emphasize the perspective with a wide-angle lens (less than 50 mm).

When analyzing a photograph, it is necessary to guess the focal distance of the lens which was probably employed so as to understand the artist’s intention.

Historical significance
In the past, low horizons were used to denote the superiority of the sitter. In New York townscape photography, high-rise buildings were, in the first decades of skyscraper architecture, frequently seen at half-height, avoiding extremes of towering or plunging effects. When they occur, they are thus striking.
In photography and film, plunging effects can be obtained by ‘’high angle views’’ whereas towering objects are usually viewed with a ‘’low-angle.’’

Examples
Horizon line at low level
High horizon-line
http://www.nypl.org
http://www.nypl.org
Berenice Abbott’s photograph of ‘’Department of Docks and Police Station, May 5, 1936’’ gives a view of a low-rise at street level. The horizon line (indicating the height of the observer’s eyes) is also at the level of the eyes of characters in the foreground; so the viewers share the station point of the man-in-the-street.
In the same site, the section on Lewis Wickes Hines’s ‘’the Construction of the Empire State Building, 1930-31’’ shows ‘’a worker at the edge of a platform, looking North’’ from a high vantage point in the scaffoldings, making us share the dangerous station of the workmen.

HOW ARE THE DISTANCES ARTICULATED?
Foreground
Background


Option Among the ‘’three distances’’ which traditionally structure the landscape so as to give it depth, the painter may select to emphasize the foreground, using the middle distance as a transition towards a distance which serves as a mere ‘’background’’ to enhance the foreground motifs.
Interpretation This is the case in heroic portraiture or classical landscape, where ‘’foreground’’ signifies ‘’importance’’ and ‘’background’’ supposes ‘’insignificance.’’
Option The painter may prefer to focus on the distance, using the foreground and middle distance as foils to lead the eye towards the central motifs placed behind them.
Interpretation This structure implies that the setting as a whole is important.

The celebrity of Manhattan’s ‘’skyline’’ implies a reversal of European conventions giving pre-eminence to the foreground (a hierarchy still existent in the language), and an assertion that the city as a whole is the focus of attention.

HOW DOES THE COMPOSITION RELATE PERPENDICULARS TO DIAGONALS?

Selecting these time-honoured methods stresses the rigorous construction of modern townscapes. It is often a way of indicating, in addition to objects, the articulation between the major elements or distances, stressing the framing effects.