Symphony in Steel: Ironworkers and the Walt Disney Concert Hall
January 31, 2004 - November 28, 2004
The new Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles has opened to great acclaim. This exhibition of 100 black-and-white photographs taken by Gil Garcetti is drawn from two recently published books featuring images of the building: Iron: Erecting the Walt Disney Concert Hall and Frozen Music, a series of panoramic photographs taken after its completion. Both celebrate the remarkable achievements of the ironworkers who assembled the steel frame and the finish ironworkers who applied the stainless steel skin to the building.
In summer 2001, Garcetti drove past the Walt Disney Concert Hall construction site and was so taken by the acrobatics of the ironworkers that he returned the next day to capture what he saw. He recorded the dangerous work they performed, with the assistance of large construction cranes, as they choreographed and coaxed thousands of tons of structural steel into place. Maintaining their balance on steel beams over one hundred feet in the air, the ironworkers patiently and bravely bolted and welded the framework for the geometrically complicated design by Los Angeles-based architect Frank O. Gehry. Nowhere has such a job been more difficult.
A computer software program originally developed for the French aerospace industry, CATIA (Computer-Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application), facilitates the design of buildings with unusual geometries. It takes years off the time normally required to plot out curvilinear shapes such as Gehry’s. Similarly, lasers now guide the placement of girders and columns in complex structures. Nonetheless, the construction of buildings such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall still relies on the same skills ironworkers have been using for over a century: courage, collaboration, determination, dedication to safety while working under difficult conditions, and know-how. Even at this stage of our proficiency with technology in construction, people must still fabricate a building.
The images in this exhibition do more than capture the construction of what may be the next acknowledged masterpiece of contemporary architecture: they depict the contributions of those who turn dreams into reality as they construct what has already become one of Los Angeles’s most memorable landmarks. Garcetti’s photographs follow the progress of the building’s graceful structure, which consumed over 12,000 pieces of iron, no two of which are alike in shape or weight. He has documented ironworking as a set of skilled activities featuring work gangs: the raising gang, the plumb-up gang, the bolt-up gang, the welders, the decking gang, and the finishers. Each task requires different skills, yet taken together, what ironworkers do allows buildings literally to stand the test of time. The exhibition honors the achievements of ironworkers everywhere who confront danger every day as they assemble some of the largest and most daring structures around the world.
Iron
Garcetti’s photographs of the ironworkers were taken over the summer and fall of 2001 and the winter of 2002. Using a Nikon 100 single-lens-reflex 35mm camera, Garcetti moved about freely, unharnessed, from one steel beam to another, as he documented the ironworkers’ extraordinary feats on one of the most challenging construction projects of the recent past. He shot quickly to assure that the ironworkers appear unselfconscious, unaware of his presence. And he often “pushed” his film speed [ASA] from 400 to 3,200 to catch the shots in available light.
Frozen Music
The panoramic images of the finished building, some of which are quite abstract, were completed between February and June 2003. They complement those made during construction, yet reinforce the image of Los Angeles as a horizontal city in the desert—an urban space so spread out that even its downtown skyscrapers seem out of place. Garcetti used a hand-held [without a tripod] X-Pan Hasselblad panoramic 35mm camera with 30mm and 45mm wide-angle lenses, using available light and exposures of one second or longer. Negatives produced at twice the width of the normal 35mm film frame give these images their striking appearance. This particular camera also has what is known as a rangefinder, where the corner marks seen through the viewfinder frame the image of the photograph.
Finale
This photograph is a reminder to all who were familiar with Los Angeles during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, when it was an expansive place but before it had “grown up” and become the sophisticated city it is today. The iconic building of that era was the Art Deco City Hall, which drew on both Mediterranean and Classical styles and was made famous through countless scenes, first in “film noir” motion pictures and later in a succession of television programs about law enforcement. Of course, this was natural because Hollywood was the film capital of the world.
Now, this building has been joined by many others, but the steel frame of the Walt Disney Concert Hall shown in this photograph isolates the City Hall in a view many people have been unable to see for a long time; still proud, the survivor of many earthquakes, and an important work of architecture in its own right.
Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are silver prints, untitled and © 2001-2003 Gil Garcetti.
Sponsors
The Museum gratefully acknowledges the extraordinary cooperation of Gil Garcetti, the Ironworkers of America, the office of Frank O. Gehry & Associates, M. A. Mortenson Company, Paris Photo, Los Angeles, and others in the preparation of this exhibition.
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Symphony in Steel is made possible through the generous support of Ron Burkle and The Yucaipa Companies and the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers. Additional funding provided by ACS, Commerce Construction, M. A. Mortenson Company, The Herrick Corporation, Arden Realty, The Charles Schwab Corporate Foundation, Ironworkers Local No.433, Iverson Yoakum Papiano & Hatch, Neil Papiano, and Shamrock Holdings of California.
