Vera Lutter photographer

A little change of pace and a look at the work of another photographer. Vera Lutter was born in Kaiserslautern, Germany, in 1960. Since completing her photographic studies at both the Munich Art Academy and the School of Visual Arts in New York City, her work has been exhibited in major exhibitions worldwide, including the Kunsthalle, Basel, the Dia Center for the Arts, New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Lutter uses the camera obscura, the most basic photographic device, to render in massive form images that serve as faithful transcriptions of immense architectural spaces. The camera obscura was originally developed during the Renaissance as an aid in the recording of the visible world.

She is best known for monumental black-and-white photographs of cityscapes. Her unique silver gelatin prints are negatives made by transforming a room into a pinhole camera obscura chamber. Directly exposed, often over many hours, onto photosensitive paper, these vistas appear as solarized images, their ethereal platinum tones imbuing the scenes with a haunting melancholy. From an early concentration on the Manhattan skyline, Lutter has turned lately to more industrial sites, including a dry dock, a zeppelin factory, an airport runway, a marina and a deserted warehouse. The last colour images shown here are from a suite of nine ordinary photographs.

1997 Lemwerder Airbase; August 15, 1997

1997 Rockefeller Center, 30 Rockefeller Plaza

 2000 Kvaerner Shipyard, Rostock IX

2000 Pepsi Cola, Long Island City, Interior (hand print detail) September, 2000

2000 Pepsi Cola, Long Island City, Interior VII; September 21-30, 2000

 2001 333 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago

2001 Frankfurt Airport; April 28, 2001

 2003 Holzmarktstrasse, Berlin

 2003 Pepsi Cola Interior XXII

 2003 Studio IX

2004 Battersea Power Station XXVI, July 29, 2004

2005 Grace Building; March 4, 2005

 2005 San Marco, Venice XIX

 2006 Rheinbraun   XVIII

 2006 Rheinbraun XVI

2006 Rheinbraun; September 2, 2006

 2007 Campo Santa Sofia, Venice XXIII

  2008 Ca del Duca Sforza, Venice

2008 Calle Vallaresso, Venice XXVII; January 31, 2008

 2008 San Giorgio, Venice IX

 2008 San Giorgio, Venice XVIII

2009 Clock Tower, Brooklyn, LXVII, June 29, 2009

 2009 Linger On

2010 Chephren and Cheops Pyramids, Giza; April 12, 2010

2013 Effelsberg Telescope; September 11, 2013

2014 Empire state building, VI; November 30, 2014

2015 Brooklyn Bridge; June 10, 2015

2015 Chrysler Building, April 1, 2015

2015 Grace Building; April 8, 2015

2015 Temple of Athena, Paestum, IX; October 12, 2015

2008-9 Samar Hussein suite of nine prints (giclee)

 Mohammed Jassim from Samar Hussein suite

 Muna Taha Abbas from Samar Hussein suite