Allen Schill
Still-Life Photography

Multi-Frame Panoramic Photographs - City Parks

The vast majority of these assemblages are of parks in New York City, some locations well-known, and others known mainly to locals like me.  A few of them are not even near New York.  But it is not a survey of parks in any given place, and it matters little where any given one was taken - that was arbitrary, a function of where I happened to be at some moment.  The important thing is rather the  particular place (and time, and conditions of light), and the feeling  that was there. 

It would be useless to pretend that there isn't a touch of the idyllic in these scenes.  My life being filled as it is with plenty of commotion, I've always been drawn to the places that offer a little serenity.  And what do we expect in a park anyway?  Parks are planned to provide a tranquil environment - the usual trees, rocks, birds, lakes, benches, playgrounds, and so on.  Cultures all over the world and throughout history have had rich traditions of landscape architecture and garden design.  Central Park, for example, was designed in accordance with some very sophisticated ideas about visual experience, and even after more than 140 years you can still sense it.

I should explain why there is some variety or disparity here in the presentation of these images - that is, why some have very thin black borders and others thick.  When I first made these, in printing I tried to keep the overall size limited by making each print small.  Most of the early black-and-white panoramas were printed on 3 1/2" x 5" enlarging paper, using a negative carrier that let me print a thin black border.  In these cases I had to expose a set of sheets of paper to the images in the sequence, and then develop them together in a darkroom tray.  Fully-processed prints were then mounted together on a board.  

The panoramas seen here with a thick black border are like that because they are contact prints - made by putting the negatives directly in contact with the enlarging paper in a contact printing frame, with a sheet of glass on top, and exposing to light.  The small borders between each image and the next are the clear intervals along the film strip, and the abundant black borders along the long sides are the clear margins of the film strips.  Each image is the same size as the 35mm frame, 24 x 36 mm, or about 1" x 1 1/2".  The contact prints were made for two reasons - to serve as proofs for me to choose among (or as prototypes for enlarged versions), and (if well-printed) as deliberately miniature versions.  These can have a marvelous gem-like quality that is rather a pleasant surprise when we are used to so much bigness.  A small, intimate voice?  On the other hand, of course, they can be enlarged, and maybe they will speak a little more loudly.

Most of the panoramas in color were made in a professional color lab (where I worked, and was able to make a few of my own things).  Those with thin black borders were enlarged to an image size of 6" x 9", using a 35mm negative carrier that had been filed out slightly to let me print a bit of black border.  (See, e.g., "Lake, Central Park, New York, December 1986", or "Pond, Sanctuary, Central Park, November 1986", or "Central Park in Mist, New York, November 1986", or "Sheep Meadow in Mist, New York, November 1986" or "Pond, Bois du Boulogne, Paris, January 1986".)  The finished prints were then mounted on a board and matted for display.  Logistically, this was a demanding project, as the archivally-matted assemblages got to be as long as six or seven feet.

There is one in color, but with a thicker border, that was enlarged, several negatives all at once, using an 8" x 10" enlarger (usually used to print from large sheet film).  The resulting prints were cut, trimmed, and mounted in sequence, then matted.  ("Morning, Bois du Boulogne, Paris, January 1986" of which each frame is about 3 1/2" x 5".)  

The last few, with thick borders, came from 35mm transparency film.  (All the others came from 35mm negatives in black and white or color.)  What you see was scanned directly from the original film strips.  (My job was made somewhat easier by not having the entire strip cut and mounted in the usual slide mounts.)

A few of these can be seen much larger on my other website, Cartilium, where you can scroll way to the right to see an enlarged version of the photomontage, much the way traditional Chinese and Japanese landscapes painted on scrolls were viewed.  (A limitation of the www.allenschill.com site is the graphic "cage", that is, the space allotted for the images seen each on its own page.  The panoramic format isn't well-adapted to such a page.)

Lake, Central Park, New York, December 1986

Sheep Meadow in Mist, New York, November 1986

Pond, Sanctuary, Central Park, November 1986

Sigel Park, The Bronx, New York, March 1982

For a more in-depth consideration of these works, see the essay "Multi-Frame Panoramic Assemblage" in this part of the site. 

© 2014 Allen Schill. All rights reserved.  No part of this document may be reproduced or used without prior written permission from the author. Anyone is welcome to link to it, or to quote brief passages, but I would like to be notified.