http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--snappingbuffalo1123nov23,0,5857128.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire
Photo project puts focus on Buffalo's architecture
By CAROLYN THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer
November 23, 2004, 3:45 PM EST
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The whale-shaped car wash that swallowed cars is gone, and preservationist Tim Tielman is without so much as a picture.
But there is still hope of saving other architectural gems, if only on film.
A Thanksgiving Day project invites amateur photographers to take aim at the vintage store fronts, closed factories and oddball houses in their midst to create a single-day snapshot of Buffalo.
The photo shoot is to become an annual event that will ultimately document the city's changing landscape.
Any unique or endangered structure is fair game, said Tielman, who took his inspiration for the project from the Audubon Society's annual Christmas bird census.
The pictures will be catalogued for historical reference and likely exhibited.
"One of the things we're concerned about is preserving some of these buildings that are endangered," said Tielman, executive director of the Campaign for Greater Buffalo. "But the other is to document change _ and we want to focus on the peculiar, what's interesting about the Buffalo area."
Like that car wash.
"You would drive into the mouth of the whale .... Part of (the project) is just fun, but it helps express the character and culture of the city," Tielman said.
Photographers have plenty of past-their-prime subjects to choose from in a city that has bled population and industry. In them, Tielman sees not only past glory days, but hope for their future.
"We have a lot of wonderful industrial complexes, really great 19th Century buildings, brick and stone, that could be used for something else," he said. "And I think even photographing them is a way of telling people how valuable they are."
No matter how much written history exists, a city's past really comes alive through images, said Mary Lou Frost, president of the Buffalo Museum of Science Camera Club, whose group is working with the Campaign for Greater Buffalo on the project.
Frost sees the photo shoot's purpose as twofold: First, to make a record of historic buildings and in some cases call attention to the need to preserve them.
"The other side is, there are aspects of the culture of western New York that we are not going to be able to preserve, they're going to change," Frost said, "and if we have a photographic history of that culture, then we don't lose it."
Frost points out the disappearing mom-and-pop stores where the proprietors lived upstairs. Photographers might also focus on an aged neon store sign or an art deco gas station tucked into a neighborhood.
"A lot of architecture has culture interwoven with it," said Frost, "and when you preserve one you preserve the other."
Tielman said the city already has plenty of photographs of its Frank Lloyd Wright buildings and well-preserved historic mansions. "We're looking for things the average person on the street finds interesting or finds peculiar," he said.
Photographs should be turned in by Dec. 4.
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Photo project puts focus on Buffalo's architecture
By CAROLYN THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer
November 23, 2004, 3:45 PM EST
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The whale-shaped car wash that swallowed cars is gone, and preservationist Tim Tielman is without so much as a picture.
But there is still hope of saving other architectural gems, if only on film.
A Thanksgiving Day project invites amateur photographers to take aim at the vintage store fronts, closed factories and oddball houses in their midst to create a single-day snapshot of Buffalo.
The photo shoot is to become an annual event that will ultimately document the city's changing landscape.
Any unique or endangered structure is fair game, said Tielman, who took his inspiration for the project from the Audubon Society's annual Christmas bird census.
The pictures will be catalogued for historical reference and likely exhibited.
"One of the things we're concerned about is preserving some of these buildings that are endangered," said Tielman, executive director of the Campaign for Greater Buffalo. "But the other is to document change _ and we want to focus on the peculiar, what's interesting about the Buffalo area."
Like that car wash.
"You would drive into the mouth of the whale .... Part of (the project) is just fun, but it helps express the character and culture of the city," Tielman said.
Photographers have plenty of past-their-prime subjects to choose from in a city that has bled population and industry. In them, Tielman sees not only past glory days, but hope for their future.
"We have a lot of wonderful industrial complexes, really great 19th Century buildings, brick and stone, that could be used for something else," he said. "And I think even photographing them is a way of telling people how valuable they are."
No matter how much written history exists, a city's past really comes alive through images, said Mary Lou Frost, president of the Buffalo Museum of Science Camera Club, whose group is working with the Campaign for Greater Buffalo on the project.
Frost sees the photo shoot's purpose as twofold: First, to make a record of historic buildings and in some cases call attention to the need to preserve them.
"The other side is, there are aspects of the culture of western New York that we are not going to be able to preserve, they're going to change," Frost said, "and if we have a photographic history of that culture, then we don't lose it."
Frost points out the disappearing mom-and-pop stores where the proprietors lived upstairs. Photographers might also focus on an aged neon store sign or an art deco gas station tucked into a neighborhood.
"A lot of architecture has culture interwoven with it," said Frost, "and when you preserve one you preserve the other."
Tielman said the city already has plenty of photographs of its Frank Lloyd Wright buildings and well-preserved historic mansions. "We're looking for things the average person on the street finds interesting or finds peculiar," he said.
Photographs should be turned in by Dec. 4.
- - -
Subscribers to Design List are required to list their actual names
during the subscription process. Names of known organizations are
accepted at the discretion of the list owner. All other listings of
subscribers are deleted from the list.
- - -
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html