Gilead Room
A very rainy day, but it was dry inside a huge ex-Bayer building on Yale’s West Campus. This is the conservation and pre-assembly of the Gilead Room from the Young’s family house, from Gilead, Connecticut. Photographed this for a future published story on the West Campus complex. I’ll hopefully have more on that later this spring/summer.
The Art Gallery art handlers had just recently put all the main pieces together and removed cardboard that had been protecting the floor boards. You can see all the parts pre-assembly here (scroll down some, not my image so come back). The framed in room will be taken apart after some more conservation and reinstalled at the Yale Art Gallery in a year or two. The open wall sections and ceiling will be plastered in once reinstalled. Cool!
 Above on East Side |
 Wide View |
 Higher View |
 South Side |
Thanks to Emily, Eric, and Tom for letting me into their secluded workspace.
Chris
Bone Rocking Chair
Ooooh! Precious. I mean it.
Nothing like photographing a glass dome in someone’s living room with windows on either side. Now you can’t tell that can you! Right that’s me job. No fancy black box, high ceiling museum studio here folks.
This Bone Rocking Chair by the artist Charles LeDray was photographed for an upcoming, and then traveling, exhibition at ICA Boston. Actual object will not be in show, but my image will be used in the show catalog and publicity. Show is called “Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork”, and is at the ICA Boston, Whitney Museum of American Art, and then Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
First image here is one of my final images (made three). Middle image was emailed to me ahead of arrival. And last, granted a snapshot out of a book, the image I was improving upon, previously published.
 Bone Rocker, Charles LeDray |
 Reflections on Glass |
 Previously Published Image |
Bone Rocking Chair is in the collection of Samuel R. Peterson (Connecticut), and thank you to him for allowing me into his home.
1000+ Ancient Coins
1000+ Ancient Coins is my second “move-in” project this summer. I spent 3 and a half weeks at the Yale Art Gallery’s Coins and Medals Department creating obverse and reverse images of two collection segments and other greatest hits to fill out a total count of about 1050 coins. Phew. Thanks to William Metcalf, curator and especially Jane Miller, museum assistant, for all their assistance getting me through.
Images were captured with the relatively simple setup as seen below in the production still gallery. The coins photographed varied from about 4cm to .5cm in diameter. Print size (aka indication of image resolution) from my captures was on average over 16cm. Obverse and reverse images were combined into one final image with a reference scale. Varying amounts of extension were required from about 56mm to over 200mm. As can be imagined depth of field was nearly non-existent and so for many of the smaller coins a post production technique called focus stacking was employed to get sharp images of lumpy objects.
Chris
Swid Powell Collection
I have two “move-in” location projects this summer. This is the first. I spent two weeks wedged (in the most comfortable way) into a small studio, photographing 80+ objects from the Yale University Art Gallery’s Swid Powell collection for general museum use and in preparation of a planned symposium in the fall. You can find out more about Swid Powell here, as explained from a 2007 exhibition. The collection includes objects designed by including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Stephen Holl, Richard Meier, Robert A. M. Stern, Stanley Tigerman, and Robert Venturi, among others. The symposium is to be held November 12-13, 2009 at the Yale School of Architecture.
Thanks so much to John Stuart Gordon for having me and all the effort polishing all the silver. The project was a pleasure.
 Swid Powell object: Capture Screen |
 Behind Object with shrouded lens. |
This nutty piece was shot with two different light set ups and pieced together to remove highlights on the green glass vase (as seen in single capture on monitor above), but keep some additional light on the large metal gold bowl.
I could post many neat looking design objects like Steven Holl’s Oil Can creamers or the Tigerman building tea service. Maybe I’ll post a link with a special Swid Powell gallery if I get a chance. UPDATE: Link to gallery of Swid Powell objects.
Anyway, keeping with the behind the scenes theme, there were many a single plate (charger) to photograph. My secret thanks goes to Tony DeCamillo, a staff photographer at YUAG for a perfect plate back drop. Plates were photographed safely on their back and then dropped into the background. Oh my god, this made blazing through about 40 plates a breeze.
 Mapplethorpe designed plate with shroud pulled back. |
 Mapplethorpe designed lily plate, finished image. |
Chris
Early European Paintings
Just got back from two days in NYC photographing beautiful early European paintings. Images will be for exhibit catalogue and promotion next year at Yale Univ. Art Gallery.
Early European paintings
Thanks to the collector for letting me into their home and especially John for handling all the art and Linsey from the Art Gallery.