Plunging into the archive: NY, NY

If you say Milano, Montreal, Seattle, Paris, New York, I immediately picture the Pirelli building by Gio Ponti, the Stock Exchange Tower by Luigi Moretti, the Central Library by Rem Koolhaas, the Centre Pompidou by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, the Empire State building by Williams F. Lamb. To think cities through buildings is a professional bias. 

Let’s stay in New York and go back to the 1930s.

Lewis Wickes Hine, Workers on Empire State Building, 1931, 24.3 x 18.3 cm. 

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library.    

Lewis Wickes Hine, Workers on Empire State Building, 1931, 24.3 x 18.3 cm. 

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library.    

Lewis Wickes Hine, A Forest of Girders, Empire State Building, 1931, 24.3 x 18.1 cm.

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library.    

Lewis Wickes Hine portrayed the Empire State Building through the people that worked to its construction. As a sociologist he was interested in the human contribution to modern industry and was convinced that documentary photography could be used as a tool for social reform.

Lewis Wickes Hine, Connecting the Beams, Empire State Building, 1931, 19.1 x 24.2 cm. 

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. 

   

Lewis Wickes Hine, Icarus, High up on Empire State Building, 1931, 19.1 x 24.2 cm. 

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library.    

Lewis Wickes Hine, Riding the Ball on Empire State Building, 1931, 19.1 x 24.2 cm. 

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library.    

I got to these photographs by searching Empire State Building on the New York Public Library Digital Collection. You can find these images also through keywords like Workers, Riveters, Plumbers, Beams, Girders, Cranes, Steel, New York City, Lewis Wickes Hine, or 1931. Each keyword denotes a different research focus. If you are interested in getting to all the photographs containing the Empire State Building you may want to enlarge your research and use New York City. You will get some false records which don’t show the Empire State Building but you will certainly don’t miss the ones that do show the building.

Ilse Bing, View of the Empire State Building by Night, 1932, 19.4 x 28.1 cm. International Center of Photography, New York.    

Jean Baudrillard said that words function like passwords (mots de passe), they are bearers of ideas and allow us to get inside things. Each collection or archive is catalogued according to a specific thesaurus. Researchers have to use the right keywords to find the "objects" they are looking for. But this is true for all search engines. The big difference between museum collections and web search engines is that museums attach to a word a very specific meaning while in the web a word can have several meanings, even contradictory ones.   

Edward Steichen, The Maypole, 1932, 40.5 x 50.8 cm. International Center of Photography, New York. 

In a museum collection enlarging the research to include more generic terms may result in records that, though are not perfectly in line with what you want to say, have the power to change the focus to more relevant topics. When we see the photograph by Edward Steichen, we think about the symbolic value that buildings can gain. When we look at the photograph by Marvin Koner and read the title that accompanies it, another important chapter of the history of the United State and of New York City in particular comes to mind. Also, times change: we are not in the 30s any more and although the Empire State Building has preserved a symbolic meaning, it is being associated to values that change as society evolves.

Marvin Koner, Immigration Story, Italy, 1956, 23 x 34.1 cm. International Center of Photography, New York.

    

Ernst Haas, Refrections, 1962, 14 x 21.1 cm. International Center of Photography, New York.    

Joel Sternfeld, A Railroad Artifact, 30^th Street, 2000, 101.1 x 127 cm. Art Institute of Chicago.    

If we step back and move away for a moment we can interpret what we see from a different perspective. When the building fades into the background new keywords come to mind: skyline, skyscrapers, island, cityscape, high line, green city, urban renewal...

But then again, whenever I visit the city and even if I barely see it, I know the Empire State is there and look for it.

Berenice Abbott, Federal Art Project, Washington Square Looking North, Manhattan, 1935, 17.8 x 23.5 cm. 

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library.