A 5:4 photograph of the Sky Reflector-Net oculus at Fulton Center seen from below, Manhattan, New York, United States, available as a limited edition print in four sizes.
Artist's Story
I went to Fulton Center in the middle of a summer day to look at the ceiling, having never been before. I came up from the platforms into the lobby and stood under it.
It looks like decoration. It is a machine.
The cone over that lobby carries nine hundred and fifty-two aluminium panels hung on a net of a hundred and twelve tensioned cables. Every panel was cut to its own shape and size and set at its own angle, and the job they do is to take daylight coming through the glass oculus at the top and throw it down to the walkways two storeys below the street. The panels return as much as ninety-five percent of the light that reaches them. The oculus is tilted to face south.
The part I did not expect is that the panels are perforated, and not equally. The ones lowest down are forty-eight percent open. Each row above is punched with smaller holes, until the panels nearest the oculus are only twenty percent open. More metal at the top and more hole at the bottom, so the whole structure brightens as it climbs toward the opening. It measures in this frame. The brightness runs from thirty-six at the bottom edge to a hundred and thirty-six around the oculus.
Aperture is the right word for all of it. The opening at the top is one, and so is every perforated panel below it, each punched to let through a measured fraction of what reaches it. The whole ceiling is a single instrument for controlling how much light gets underground.
This crop is 40 percent of the frame width, about 20 inches across on the 50 inch print. Across the opening the glazing resolves into a grid with the bracing rods and their fittings visible at every crossing, and the small glass fins hung beneath it read as separate pieces. Around the rim the panels separate one from the next with the cables running between them, each one holding its own angle and its own tone. Click to view at full size.
About This Photograph
Fulton Center, at Broadway and Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan, photographed from the lobby looking up at midday in summer. Single frame. The building opened in 2014 and carries around three hundred thousand passengers a day across nine subway lines.
The panels are finished somewhere between a mirror and a matte surface. A true mirror would send a hard beam straight down and sweep it across the floor as the sun moved, which is useless for lighting a room and unpleasant to stand in. A matte surface would scatter the light so widely that almost none of it would reach the bottom. The finish used here returns most of what lands on it while spreading it enough to arrive as general illumination, and glass lenses set into the oculus amplify the light on its way in.
Aperture
Steve Austinhttps://www.steveaustinphotography.com/
Location
Fulton Center, Manhattan, New York, United States
Subject
Sky Reflector-Net · oculus · Fulton Center
Capture
Single frame, midday
Format
Photograph · vertical, 4:5
Sizes
16 × 20 in · 24 × 30 in · 32 × 40 in · 40 × 50 in
Print Media
TruLife Acrylic · ChromaLuxe Metal · Baryta paper
Edition
Limited, 25 / 50 / 100 by presentation
What it Does in a Room
Its cast is cyan rather than blue, and that turns out to be diagnostic. Measured across the frame, red sits at eighty-six while green and blue run to a hundred and nine and a hundred and fourteen, close together and both well above it. That is the colour of daylight arriving through glass and bouncing off aluminium, which is exactly what the photograph is of. Hang it under warm bulbs and the cast reads instead as the colour of old fluorescent tubes, and the picture starts to look like a photograph of an institution. Under neutral light it reads as daylight and the picture is about the sky. The bulb does not change the print. It changes what the print appears to be a photograph of.
None of its four edges has anything to do with its subject. The cone runs off the frame on all sides, so what you are looking at is a sample of a continuous surface rather than a composed view with a beginning and an end. Two things follow. The size decision is unusually low risk, because a larger print does not change the composition, it only shows more of the same structure, which is not true of a landscape where the framing is the picture. And the moulding is doing genuine work rather than finishing something already resolved. The frame is the only edge this image has, and it is arbitrary by design.
It is also a ceiling, and a wall is not a ceiling. Almost every photograph is hung in roughly the orientation it was seen: a landscape was horizontal and stays horizontal. This one was overhead and is now vertical, rotated ninety degrees out of the position it was made in. Most viewers do not consciously register that, but they feel it, and the slight difficulty of placing yourself relative to the picture is part of what makes it hold. It is worth not fighting. Hang it high, with the centre at about sixty inches, so the viewer looks up at it the way the camera did, and the rotation becomes something the eye can resolve rather than a puzzle it keeps working on.
Not sure which size the room calls for, or want dimensions not listed here? Sizes beyond 40 × 50 are available on request and ship crated by freight. That conversation is welcome before an order is placed. Start that conversation and I will answer within one business day.
How small is too small for a photograph like this?
At the Intimate size the picture is twenty inches across and sixteen tall, and the overall form holds easily. A bright circle in a dark cone is a large simple shape. What goes is the count. The cable net divides the cone into several thousand diamonds, and at this size the finer ones toward the edges close up into a grey field, so the structure stops being made of separate panels. The glazing bars across the oculus also merge. That matters because the whole subject is a thing assembled from many identical parts. The Collected at thirty by twenty-four returns the diamonds toward the edges. If you are weighing a size against a specific wall, choosing the right print size covers the measurements and the viewing distances in more detail.
What changes at the largest size?
At fifty by forty, working from the opening outward: the glazing bars across the oculus resolve into a grid with the bracing rods visible between them, and the sky beyond reads as sky rather than as white. Around the rim the individual panels separate from one another with the cables running between them, and the perforations in the metal become visible as texture rather than as tone. Further out, the difference in perforation from one row to the next becomes legible, so you can see the structure opening up as it descends. The cable rods and fittings resolve at each crossing point. And in the darker lower corners, where the light barely reaches, the panels still hold their edges. Why scale matters covers what happens perceptually when a photograph reaches the size where the eye has to cross it.
What kind of room does this photograph suit?
A room with height, and a wall you meet square on. An entry, a stair hall, a study, a double-height space, an office. Hang it high, with the centre at about sixty inches. On materials it wants cool neutrals: pale grey plaster, concrete, limestone, blackened steel. Three things to avoid. Use neutral bulbs at four thousand Kelvin or thereabouts rather than warm ones, for the reason above. Keep any grid or mesh out of the same view, including perforated screens, slatted panels, tiled walls and open shelving, because the subject is several thousand diamonds at a consistent pitch and a second grid anywhere nearby joins the count. And do not hang it where a bright window sits in the same field of view, since the oculus is the brightest thing in the picture and a real one beside it competes. When your mind needs to rest takes the question further.
Every work ships insured and arrives with a signed certificate of authenticity.
If a piece is damaged in transit, the choice of replacement is always yours, and your edition number stays with you.
Production time runs 2 to 3 weeks for metal, 3 to 4 weeks for acrylic and paper, and 5 to 6 weeks for framed work.
Each print is made to order and takes its place in a numbered edition, so sales are final. Before you choose, I am glad to help: send a photo of your wall and I will show you this work in your room at true scale, at no charge. Start a conversation
Collector's Choice · TruLife ® Acrylic in Italian Frame
Collector Edition of 25· Lumachrome TruLife Acrylic · Handcrafted Italian Frame
TruLife acrylic in a handcrafted Italian frame with a linen liner chosen for the image. Frame series, finish, and liner are settled with you after the order, and production begins from there. The frame and liner add about fourteen inches to the finished dimensions, worth allowing for when planning placement.
Signature Acrylic Edition of 50· Lumachrome TruLife · Gallery Float Mount
Face-mounted to TruLife acrylic and floated approximately one inch from the wall, with no frame to mediate between the image and the room. UV-resistant, anti-reflective, and scratch-resistant, with a lifetime guarantee against fading.
Signature Metal Edition of 50· ChromaLuxe Print · Gallery Float Mount
Color infused into the aluminum panel itself, floated from the wall on a concealed system. Where acrylic produces luminosity, metal produces clarity. Exceptional fade resistance with no glazing or coating required.
Fine Art Edition of 100· Hahnemühle Baryta Fine Art Paper
Printed without acrylic, so light meets the paper surface directly. Highlights stay luminous, shadows keep their nuance, and the surface has a tactile quality the other presentations approach differently. The understated choice, and the traditional one.
Complimentary shipping within the continental United States. International collector shipping available upon request.
Still deciding
Designing for Stillness
A guide to choosing art for restorative spaces
How to tell whether an image will still hold you in a year, how scale changes what a photograph does in a room, and how to match a piece to the work a room actually performs. It cites the research it draws on, and it is equally clear about where that research stops. About ten minutes to read.
