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Marina City lands role in documentary on iconic architecture
June 23, 2011 – The dams, highways, world fairs, and skyscrapers of the mid 20th century that once represented hope and prosperity – whatever happened to them? That question came to mind as a Dutch-Canadian photographer was looking at a photograph of Marina City. Intrigued, Toni Hafkenscheid decided to travel to Chicago and other U.S. cities to photograph what he calls “relics of the future.” The project evolved into a documentary and this week Toni and a three-man video crew arrived to photograph and learn more about Marina City. They hope to have a one-hour film that captures “iconic images of technology and architecture that were once considered visions of the future.”
Tilting and shifting the concept is Hafkenscheid’s style of photography – an optical effect with a shallow depth of field that makes the image look like a miniature scale model. Marina City may have inspired Toni to pursue architectural photography in the first place. He saw the photo of the complex in a Dutch book he read as a teen-ager called The Wonders of the World. “It’s full of these wonders of the world and some are more ancient and some are more modern,” he recalls. “There was something about the photograph [of Marina City], the way it was photographed. It’s a typical architecture photograph – blue sky, nice clouds. All of that now plays a role in all the photography that I do.” Photographers Hafkenscheid and Dirk Kome – along with videographer Nelson Rogers and director Rob Lindsay – photographed both the outside and inside of Marina City on Tuesday and Wednesday. They interviewed Chicago architecture expert Frank Youngwerth and Marina City Online editor Steven Dahlman, both residents of Marina City. The crew left on Wednesday for St. Louis. Websites: |
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