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  • Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:12 PM

    Love them or hate them, mid-century rectangular glass curtain buildings like this are easy to dismiss as being "boring", but I think that misses something.

    Reflections of the surroundings become part of the facade, which changes at different angles and throughout the day. I visited several times and made dozens of photos, all quite different, before I settled on this one, and there are infinitely many photos others could make, all unique. (Similar to the new World Trade Center in this regard).

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  • Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:12 PM

    The UN Secretariat building was designed by an international team of architects (most notably Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer) and completed in 1950. It was the first important "International Style" modernist skyscraper in New York - exemplified here here by a simple, unadorned rectangle with reflective glass curtain walls on either side.

    Glass box office buildings became almost cliche in mid-century NYC, but the UN remains unusual in being set apart in the skyline, uncrowded by neighbors.

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  • Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:12 PM

    I have mixed feelings about Le Corbusier's architecture (to say nothing of his urban planning philosophy - he clearly influenced Robert Moses), but I think the UN Secretariat building was one of his successes.

    An aside: If you look at the full resolution version (downloadable on flickr), you can see the HF amateur radio antenna on the roof. Nerds are everywhere, even/especially at the UN. There's also a family taking a group picture on the street in front.

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  • BlueDotBlueDot@left-bank.net
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:39 PM

    @mattblaze

    There's a building in Milwaukee on Wisconsive Ave that has this quality. Beautiful old buildings, reflected in the deep blue glass of the new one.

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  • Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 12:51 AM

    @mhoye For the record, I’m not “committed” to monochrome. I do work in color sometimes. But I’m generally more interested in exploring shapes and geometry than colors, which represent a dimension that I haven’t really mastered.

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  • Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 12:54 AM

    @mhoye That said, there are many different excellent photos one could make of this interesting building, and fortunately, I’m not the only camera owner out there.

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  • Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 12:57 AM

    @mhoye And I appreciate your comment! I just don’t generally incorporate color into my practice.

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  • mhoye but seasonally spookymhoye@cosocial.ca
    Oct 15, 2026, 1:40 AM

    @mattblaze I could have worded that in a way that came across better than "your artistic choices have produced a substandard result in this case". I appreciate your attention to the geometric elements of composition, I've certainly changed how I shoot because of your work.

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  • Matt Blazemattblaze@federate.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 1:42 AM

    @mhoye I guess the essential difference is if this is intended as a "portrait" of this building, it would probably work better in color. But if it's using the building to explore something else, that might not be the right choice.

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  • ohirohir@vivaldi.net
    Oct 15, 2026, 1:45 AM

    @mhoye
    > monochrome shortchanges the subject.

    YMMV For me the subject of Matt's art is the figure, the shape, the geometry. There are plenty of nice well composed color pictures. Yet it is momochrome picture that let us focus on the other dimensions of the scene frozen in time.

    @mattblaze

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