Missing in Time

The kids are off to school; I’m off to school. I’m trying to plough the fallow fields of my academic interests. MIT has excellent OpenCourseware offerings including Introduction to Urban Design and Development.

So tonight, I got started reading with a passionate book Close-Up: How to Read the American City which shows how to find new ways of seeing urban spaces. Here’s a large illustration on how we are almost subconsiously trained to see, and draw and photograph landscapes using a perspective of foreground on the left leading into the scene. Subservient water fills the right of the frame.

Notice a friend in the lower left? We used to live by Lake Anne in Reston two moves ago. This was a landmark sight in American architecture! But it had faded to an afterthought just 35 years later.

So without judgement I headed to our photo library to search of landscapes with composition that was both classical and creative.

The last one is taken by Ginnie who will always put people in the frame.