Dale Laurin, On the Way To

When I used to photograph, I saw people not as potential subjects but as inescapable obstructions. Like many architects, I'd wait impatiently until all passersby were clear of the viewfinder before ever closing the shutter on a carefully composed shot of a building that caught my eye. Eli Siegel asked me once in an Aesthetic Realism lesson if I had preferred buildings to people. The answer was yes. Thankfully this changed!

Two results are "On the Way To," and "Nearly There." While the people in both photographs may be small next to those looming office towers, they're hardly incidental. I felt the jaunty sameness and difference of the many people—and their shadows—in the first work, and that striking and mysterious lady in white in the second, giving the buildings more life, depth, and definition.          

—DL