Hemispheres
Magazine
United Airlines
April 1999
6 page photo spread
JENNY OKUN
By Margaret Moore
In 1913, when Marcel Duchamp exhibited his splintered, dynamic work Nude Descending
a Staircase, he challenged the world to look at painting from a new angle. In
much the same way, Jenny Okun has reinvented photography, except that she leaves
out the nude and concentrates on the staircase. Her layered montages, built
up as she winds her film in tiny increments through a Hasselblad camera, seem
to dissolve the outer skin of a building revealing its soul. The final images
are printed with an Iris inkjet printer for a result that is closer to watercolor
painting than conventional photographic reproduction. Okun began her cubist
experiments with landscapes but discovered an even more lyrical geometry in
architecture’s and angles. In 1997, she was commissioned by the Getty Museum
in Los Angeles to photograph its new building, designed by architect Richard
Meier; her image of the museum’s entrance not only won critical kudos but
has become the Getty’s third-highest-selling poster. In reassembling a
building into a syncopation of textures, colors, and shadows, Okun returns to
us an experience that — unlike the cool, level gaze of traditional photography
— comes close to our own fragmentary way of seeing.