Multicultural Streetscape

[Walter Glover]

Old Rite Russian Orthodox Christian Church with silver and gold onion domes cheek-by-jowl with a Victorian working man's cottage in a Lidcombe, N.S.W. streetscape.

The onion domes were fabricated and plated on the front lawn of the structure and were lifted into place by helicopter.



SINAR F2 II 8x10. Schneider Apo Symmar 300mm 1:5.6
Kodak T-Max 100, Kodak T-Max RS 1+9, Jobo ATL 2 +, Expert drum

[Maris]

I guess it would not have been hard to make a magnificent photograph of just the church but including the working man's cottage is the perfect "kicker", grand edifice versus humble edifice, that intensifies the scene and its implications. And the working man's free-form street tree also contrasts nicely with the disciplined vegetation behind the church fence.

[Walter Glover]

Thanks Maris,

The old cottaage is actually part of the church precinct and is possibly used for accommodation or administration. I was repeatedly shooed away by a chap calling himself the bishop because photographing the building was contravening the 2nd. commandment.
On another occasion I distilled my motif of the cultural clash further. For this treatment both swings and tilts: were employed to extend the plane of focus left to right along the the vertical towers and chimney and up and down the pitch of the gabled roof with mountains of indirect shift to retain the verticals.



Sinar F2 ii, Nikon Nikkor-M 450mm 1L9
kodak T-Max 100, T-Max RS 1+9, Jobo ATL 2 +, Expert Drum

[Maris]

Technically exquisite use of a challenging lens. And downright witty too with the onion domes poised as receiving stations for divine radiance and the other antenna as a receiver for the disappointments of broadcast television.

Curiously, the Old Rite is a breakaway group from mainstream Orthodoxy because they would not accept the reforms instituted by Patriarch Nikon. No relation to Nippon Kogaku I should think.