36 Views of Mount Nuffield

At the centre of our campus is a great lumpy prominence of sheet copper roofing, weathered to that unmistakable verdigris colour, like a huge swimming pool turned inside out. It's the Nuffield Theatre, a wonderful facility and a useful landmark.




A prominent landmark has been used as the witty device for a visual series by a number of artists. One immediately thinks of Hokusai's 36 Views of Mount Fuji and Henri Rivière's tribute to it, 36 Views of the Eiffel Tower (if you don't know Rivière, he's worth checking out, I think his graphic eye and in particular his prints of Brittany are outstanding). In photography, there is Joel Meyerowitz's series on the St. Louis Arch, and I'm sure any number of people are currently working on their "36 Views of the London Eye" series (hurry, guys!). If nothing else, it's a good way of bringing civic pride and artistic integrity within shouting distance of each other, not a bad formula for a project proposal or commercial undertaking ...

Will I start such a series myself? Not sure, but it's tempting. The thought was provoked by these two images made with the Panasonic LX3 this week, the one above cropped square from the 4:3 aspect ratio, the one below using the 16:9 ratio which I'm using increasingly often.




Here's another 16:9 Psonic picture taken this week (in the car park), that, whilst not of the Nuffield, somehow connects with it in terms of colours and shapes.