End Page: Immortalize Your House: Artist Jenny Okun

05/01/2003

The Guggenheim Bilbao and the Getty Center in Los Angeles have earned their superstar architects—Frank Gehry and Richard Meier, respectively—more attention than the art collections they were built to house. And so it is appropriate that both museums commissioned artist Jenny Okun to photograph their structures for posters—her use of superimposed images elegantly reveals the essence of each celebrated building in a way that literal representation cannot.

“I look for buildings that I can glorify, ones that celebrate space and design,” says Okun, who has just photographed the Tate Modern. Once she has found her subject (her favorite buildings are by Gehry, Ricardo Legorreta, Santiago Calatrava and Richard Rogers), she walks the site, absorbing the details that interest her and making preliminary drawings that determine how the images will mesh together.

Okun, who divides her time between Los Angeles and London, uses a Hasselblad camera and winds film incrementally to capture multiple exposures on a single negative. After she has adjusted the color digitally, Okun produces Iris print panels (an ink-printing process that makes the final product resemble a watercolor) arranged as triptychs. “I start piecing them together, moving them around,” she says. “I want you to be able to sit in front of a photograph and have your eye constantly moving around. It’s not like a snapshot. It’s not about an instant in time.”

Craig Krull Gallery, 310.828.6410, www.jennyokun.com