Lewis Baltz

Unoccupied office, Mitsubishi Vitre (FR), 1989-1991, courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne

artist

text by JEFF RIAN

 

An office at the Mitsubishi headquarters in Vitre, France, from Lewis Baltz’s series “Sites of Technology” depicts a pristine, clinical interior, which is contrasted with an exterior lawn made to look natural. Except for the title, it’s hard to know what exactly happens inside this corporate/industrial space. The desks suggest projects, most likely with profit in mind. The reflected natural light on the floor and wall are juxtaposed with the grid of artificial neon lights overhead.

Lewis Baltz was born in 1945 in Newport Beach, California. In 1967, at 22, he was shooting high-resolution black-and-white photographs, which he called Prototypes, of cars, building façades, and signage, things that were sprouting up across the American landscape in its greatest period of commercial growth. He set his camera on a tripod…