Philadelphia City Hall (afternoon)

For the Pennsylvania Convention Center, artist Anna Bogatin created a series of digital works that are based on her photographs of two major historical landmarks in Philadelphia – City Hall and Independence Hall.  The images were created by selecting a single pixel column from the center of a building in a photograph, and then stretching that pixel column horizontally.  The colors and widths of the lines are authentic, unaltered, and correspond directly to the details in the photo of each particular building.

For example, the dark wide stripe at the top of Philadelphia City Hall (afternoon), shown here, is the statue of William Penn and the two bright yellow lines come from the clock.  City Hall as a building is rich with architectural details, which when abstracted, resonate in an exuberant symphony of lines, yet the structure retains its original elegance.

With this work, Bogatin celebrates the order found in nature and the beauty found in chance.  It also offers a fresh look on a familiar reality.