Without the perceptual ordering of his sense responses into images of things in space, man cannot orient himself. Without shaping his physical environment in accordance with these images, he cannot survive. His capacity to structure his environment according to his needs-that is, his ability to work out a rapport with his world-determines the quality of his life.
Gyorgy Kepes 1
Leonard Volk's work in photography is exceptional for its breadth of engagement with the lifeworld, for its passion for and pleasure in vision, sustained over half a century. It is remarkable, notwithstanding that the same sensibility is obtains in the practice of both architecture and photography, that this body of work accumulated more or less concurrently with Volk's practice of architecture. Surely the serious practice of photography and of architecture are each demanding enterprises, and engagement of one perhaps might seem to preclude the other. But as Kimon Nicolaides urged:
Each medium that you use should enrich the others. . . . This change of medium might be likened to a change of language. The experience of using two languages makes each more rich than it can possibly be by itself. And, more importantly, the attempt to convey a thought from one language to another makes possible a finer comprehension of the thought.2
Mies famously suggested that in the practice of architecture, "God is in the details."3 Surely this is also true of photography, and indeed of any of the arts. Attention to detail informs Volk's sensibility, and of course not only when the salient detail is thematized in the images of the "Everyday" series. It obtains no less so in Volk's work in photography, encompassing the quotidian event of visitors at the Paris zoo and the extraordinary event of General Douglas MacArthur's last parade though Manhattan.
If the photograph is extraordinary, it is not merely because the thing or the event photographed is extraordinary, for in no case is a photograph ever merely what was photographed, the indexicality of the medium notwithstanding.4 A photograph is always already a representation of what was photographed, however the inherent ontological distinction in the discursive field in which the practices of photography are embedded.5 In principle, any number of distinctly different photographs might be made of whatever motif, many of the resulting photographs being anything but extraordinary, while perhaps some or one is quite extraordinary. If a photograph is extraordinary, it is because the representation in the photograph of what was photographed is such that the representation is a rigorous articulation of form by which what was photographed is given precise signification.
Consider At the Paris Zoo. [checklist 30] In the right foreground, a gentleman in raincoat and hat holds a child, given his age perhaps his grandchild; his gaze returns that of the photographer, and thus the viewer. Another man, and two other persons are in the middle distance, at the right edge of the image, looking into the space of the habitat. At the left, small and distant, a monkey climbs on the rocks of the habitat, its dark shape in profile asymmetrically balancing the composition. The rocks have the sculpted, faceted aspect of depictions of mountains in a Quattrocento painting, e.g., Duccio's Burial of the Virgin or Raising of Lazarus. This is but a coincidental and merely apparent reference, no doubt, but the artificiality of the rock forms in the habitat is nonetheless consequential: insofar as the habitat resembles the artificial and limited space of a diorama background, the foreground figures are at once more 'real' by virtue of their greater contrast, and their greater sharpness due to the differential focus resulting from limited depth of field. Thus, the figure of the monkey and its habitat appears as a painted backdrop, while the foreground figures themselves appear as specimens in a diorama. Where does this place the viewer?6 The viewer of the photograph is to the foreground figures in the photograph as the foreground figures are to the monkey in its habitat. All of that, and the expression on the faces of the gentleman and child, too.
Consider Turning. [checklist 78] The pomp of a Roman general receiving a triumph plays out in twentieth century Manhattan. It is difficult to imagine a more perfect visual metaphor for the turn in General Douglas MacArthur's long career. The General sits in the open convertible near the center of the composition, not insignificant in itself.7 Framed within a pentagon of light, MacArthur has a last moment in the spotlight. MacArthur ends a brilliant career surrounded by attendants, functionaries, motorcycle officers, and a swarm of press photographers each armed with 4x5 Speed Graphic.
The ordering of the responses of the sensa, giving form to images in space and to a world determine, as Kepes said, "the quality of a life." No less so does this ordering determine the quality of the images of the world one makes. The quality of Volk's images will repay a second look, and more.
Leonard Volk, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects Emeritus, grew up in Dallas. After attending Texas Country Day School [now St. Marks], Volk graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover. Volk earned a B.A. in American Studies at Yale in 1949, subsequently traveling in Europe for fourteen months, during which he became an enthusiastic photographer. After receiving the Bachelor of Architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959, Volk returned to Dallas, where he practiced architectural design with Selzer Associates, Architects, for 30 years, many as a principal of the firm, and had volunteer career working on community goals, neighborhood improvement and affordable housing. After retiring from architecture and volunteerism in 1996, Volk has concentrated on photography, working on the images he accumulated since 1950, and adding more.
Space now is not just where things happen: things make space happen. Space was clarified not only in the place where the picture hangs--the gallery, which, with postmodernism, joins the picture plane as a unit of discourse. The fragment from the real world plunked on the picture's surface is the imprimatur of an unstoppable generative energy. Do we not, through an odd reversal, as we stand in the gallery space, end up inside the picture, looking out at an opaque picture plane that protects us from a void?