Chicago

Pol Bury

ca. 1969 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

In 1962 the kinetic sculptor Bury began a series of photobased works called “Cinetisations” in which he cut photographs of architecture and works of art into thin strips that he reassembled to create compositions that appear to swerve, buckle, or collapse into themselves. In an interview in 1970, Bury explained, “My cinetised skyscraper reveals the slow-motion work of gravity. . . . The intervention in the image might seem to be a menacing desire to destroy, but we must see in it the wish to give an air of liberty to that which thinks itself immutable.” He made this “cinetisation” of the Richard J. Daley Center, Chicago’s tallest building from 1965 to 1969, when he was teaching in Chicago in the late 1960s.

Artist

Pol Bury

Date

ca. 1969

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2012