I have always been attracted to the geometric aesthetic of architecture, so naturally I was drawn to Lewis Baltz’s work when it was shown in class during discussion on the New Topographic.  While I have always liked the incorporation of lines and minimalism overall, I was particularly inspired by Baltz’s photographs, and wanted to use an interpretation of his concepts in my final project; since he shot in black and white, I decided to try to do so as well.  Another idea that I toyed with in this project was a differing perspective than usually encountered. While I captured some photographs as straight-on eye-level images, I wanted to capture the change in perspective that one would encounter by simply looking upward.

In today’s age of mobile technology and all-encompassing efficiency, most pedestrians walk with their heads down, looking straight ahead as if even their gait is goal-oriented, or they’ll be tinkering at their phones- effectively shutting out the outside world and its stimuli.  By easily looking up, one is shown an entirely new perspective, one that is not commonly seen, and one that is not commonly thought about. There are four cardinal directions, as seen on a compass rose, and in everyday life we often only experience the world with three of them, if we were to be considered the origin: west, east, and south.  The northern direction is underrepresented, even though so many views of it are so compelling, and as I hope to prove in this project, make really pleasing photographs.