As much as we love to read around here—and even though we rely on the printed word (and the e-printed word, or whatever you want to call it) for our livelihoods—by some Friday afternoons, we’ve reached our limit; it’s all we can do to drag our text-saturated eyeballs across another line of type. If you’re feeling about the same—and a quick nap isn’t an option—then perhaps a video diversion will help. And we think we have just the thing: a collection of time-lapse architecture videos from around the Web. Read more…

Christoph Gielen has a unique perspective—literally—on the sprawl that has taken over so much of the American built landscape since the 1960s. As someone who has spent a lot of time in helicopters, looking down on the eerily perfect geometries of the nation’s suburbs, the German artist knows just how artificial, and unsustainable, these communities really are. With his Arcadia series, a portion of which we’re featuring here, Gielen hopes to spur viewers to think about the consequences of what they’re seeing (and, perhaps, where they live). “With these pictures, I am interested in exploring the intersection of art and environmental politics,” Gielen says. “I hope to trigger a reevaluation of our built environment and the methods of its development, to ask: What can be considered a viable, ecologically sound growth process?” Click here to launch a slide show of Gielen’s photographs.

This fall, Aperture has released three photography books that, each in its own way, talk about development, the environment, and the human relationship to the landscape. This last point in particular—the way the landscape is both affected and perceived by human beings—struck me as the connecting thread among three otherwise quite different books. While each body of work tells a different story, they all made me think about my own environment, both local and global.
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In Sawdust Mountain, Eirik Johnson presents us with the familiar struggle between humans and the natural environment upon which they depend. His subject is the logging and salmon fishing industries of the Pacific Northwest, and the way these industries must adapt as the landscape changes. The photographs refer clearly to the history of landscape photography—calling to mind, particularly, early American photographs of the West by such greats as Carleton Watkins and William Henry Jackson. But Johnson does not herald triumph in his images; rather, his pictures are quiet—nearly silent, in fact—and his palette is dominated by the subdued, rain-washed blues and greens of the Pacific Northwest. Here, the sun never blinds us, but rather appears as through gauze. These muted hues complement the subject matter—the industries and the towns that serve them are in transition as the old-growth trees and wild salmon grow more and more scarce. Read more…

Our recent story on Thom Faulders’s backyard installation Deformscape has been all over the blogs lately. People seem particularly amused (and rightfully so) by a quote from the owner, a senior vice president at Apple, regarding his ambition for the flat surface’s vortex effect: “I wanted someone to barf when they look at it.” Well, over the weekend, the project’s photographer, Theodor Rzad, chimed in on the story’s comments page with an important addendum to the discussion:

I’m Thom Faulder’s photographer for this project and I can promise you that neither of us barfed during the shoot.

Glad we cleared that up. You can view more photos of Faulders’s vertiginous installation over at Digited Image Company. And be sure to read the original story here.

For all you tennis fans cursing the four-month gap between the U.S. and Australian Opens, here’s a little something to tide you over. (That’s a nice way of glossing over the fact that this post is about an event that ended two weeks ago, no?)

Olympus, which sponsors the U.S. Open, invited a group of journalists (myself included) for a behind-the-scenes tour, during which we would test out the company’s new 12.3-megapixel E-P1 camera, also known as the PEN. When it comes to photography, I’m an enthusiastic amateur. In tennis terms, I’m a hacker. I long ago gave up my 35mm SLR for a digital point-and-shoot that stays on auto. So it was no surprise that most of my journalist peers, who by and large cover gadgets and technology, had far more technical inquiries than I did. But since the PEN aims to bring some of the capabilities of an SLR, such as interchangeable lenses, to a point-and-shoot model, I was arguably the perfect guinea pig. I kept my test camera on auto all day. Read more…

Click the image to launch a slide show of Hemmerle’s photos.

Earlier this summer we sent frequent Metropolis contributor Sean Hemmerle to photograph New York’s new baseball stadiums for “Play Ball.” Hemmerle turned in a stellar set of images, only a handful of which we were able to run in the magazine. Here’s a slide show of Hemmerle’s photos, including several that didn’t make it into print.

Photo: John Ellis for Metropolis

The legendary architectural photographer Julius Shulman died last Wednesday, a few months shy of his 99th birthday. (Click here to view a slide show of his photos.) Here, three of Metropolis’s editors share their memories of the man and his work.

Martin C. Pedersen, executive editor:

The first time I met Julius Shulman was at a lunch in his honor at the Four Seasons. He sat at the end of a long table of admirers (a position he relished) and held court. Ninety-two or ninety-three years old at the time, he was at least four decades older than everyone there and yet, in spirit, he was easily the youngest. Without too much prompting (maybe a half glass of wine), he launched into a series of stories, recalling houses and architects and images with a vividness and color that made me suspect that he was filling in a lot of the blanks or (more likely) telling well-told tales. It didn’t matter. He took such clear pleasure in recounting the past and reliving it for us live that no one could remain un-charmed. I certainly couldn’t. And though he was one of the most important architecture photographers of the 20th century, he was also something else, a true oddity: the Un-Tortured Great Artist. Here, clearly, was a happy man. Julius was a walking billboard for a life well-lived. And for the rest of us “kids” at the table, an object lesson: Do what you love and the rest (with a little luck) will follow. Read more…

A 2007 portrait of Shulman in his Hollywood Hills home. Photo: John Ellis for Metropolis. Click the image to launch a slide show of Shulman’s work.

Metropolis was saddened to learn this afternoon that the legendary architectural photographer Julius Shulman passed away last night, just a few months shy of his 99th birthday. We’ll be posting more about Shulman’s astonishing career in the coming days. In the meantime, we thought readers would like to revisit Paul Makovsky’s 2007 story, “The Photographic Memory of Julius Shulman,” in which the photographer discusses the genesis of some of his most remarkable images. You can also view the photos and read Shulman’s commentary in a slide-show format by clicking the image above.

Book photo, Sarah Palmer; others courtesy Nicole Huber and Ralph Stern

When it comes to taking popular images of Las Vegas, the picture-postcard nighttime shots of the Bellagio with its streams of fountains on the Strip or the slightly drunken and very silly party shots in front of the Eiffel Tower replica are the probably the norm. Architecture and urban theorists Nicole Huber and Ralph Stern have taken a more serious view of Sin City in their new photo book, Urbanizing the Mojave Desert: Las Vegas, which shows a hybrid landscape reshaped by everyday urbanization, focusing on the radical transformation of the Mojave Desert. Their 192-page book (published by Jovis Verlag) features a lengthy essay and 150 color photographs of everything from billboards and abandoned trailer parks to power plants and golf courses rising out of the desert. I spoke to the authors about the book, the idea of a green Las Vegas, and how  recent developments in Las Vegas are redefining the desert landscape.

How did you come up with this idea for the book?

Ralph Stern: In architectural theory and architectural circles in Las Vegas, much of the identity is still organized around Venturi/Scott Brown’s Learning From Las Vegas, and there’s still this allegiance to the Strip as an ideal, even though the original has all but vanished. When I got there in 2004, the greater metropolitan area population was at 1.7 million and already planning for a city of four million. The Strip is certainly an element, but it’s not what’s going on here. It is this incredible metropolis that nobody seems to address in terms of its impact on the surrounding federal lands, on any land use and land policy issues, or on water issues. Our book is a response to the misplaced focus on the Strip and a lack of attention to the city on the whole. Read more…

Last weekend was a busy one in many corners of New York City—and not only because of ICFF. Across the East River, amid the charming cobblestone streets, glittering condos, and repurposed warehouses of DUMBO, the second New York Photo Festival was also taking place. I saw a lot of great work there, but three European photographers from William A. Ewing’s show, All over the place!, stood out as worthy of mention. Read more…