Other libraries

It feels a little improper dallying with other libraries while having a closer-than-usual relationship with the Oshkosh Public Library. Photo Opp and The Appleton Public Library hosted a Photowalk in their brand-new building last Saturday.

We were asked to arrive before closing and were sequestered in a meeting room until after the normal sweep of the building. (Is that just a museum term?)

Upon release, I, of course, went to the main staircase. The design of the building goes out of its way to provide views with as much depth as possible. Is that a little 20th-century brutalism influence with that raw surface on the concrete columns?

A gallery and what looks like a mid-century modern café on the south side of the building. The giant window lighting didn't have much effect because it was dark and raining outside, but it's probably pretty cool on a sunny day.

Very pragmatic exposure of the technical infrastructure. The Pompidou Center in Paris, which radically introduced this kind of thing in 1977, is currently being remodeled to hide it.

Not sure whether to blame Kubrick or Rothko for this one.

A minimalist utility cluster with reading areas on either side is divided by a hallway.

Seriously, the next person who says it's a great day for an indoor photowalk is going to get it.

Maybe because of my recent forays into stereo photography, these extreme depth features of the building really caught my eye. On one end of the first floor is this giant glass box with Newton ring-like swirls enclosing a space that goes from a skylight inset into the ceiling down to the Children's Library in the lower level.

The view from below. Evidence of the photowalk is seen in the ghostly image of a photographer with her camera on the bottom terrace of the play area at the right and a tripod between the column and the stacks on the left.

When we had to leave, it was a little late and dark for the bad weather to make good photographs using a pinhole camera, but I still had three frames left. The north building of Polk Library at the University is planned to be torn down and reconstructed. It seemed appropriate to go there to finish the roll.

The atrium connects the 1967 North building to the 1973 South building, beneath which I served for three decades. I usually used another entrance to descend to my office, but for three and a half years while I was both Director of Learning Technologies and Interim Chief Information Officer, I probably arose from the "lower level" through this space and up three floors in Dempsey Hall, in the background, two or three times a day. I had both knees replaced shortly after I retired.

I bumped into the current Library Director and the Head of Public services (two different people), and we discussed the reconstruction plan. They informed me that my subterranean domain was going to be gutted and filled with compact shelving.

Except in the windowless conference room, the only place I ever spent much time in the north building was the windowless stacks on the third floor. It was where Q and TR were shelved. Now, it holds half the bound periodicals and the Educational Media Center, which had to be moved because the Republican Legislature, in their war on education, let the HVAC systems decay to where they are in danger of exploding, which, I suppose, would achieve their ends. 

Thinking about this was making me very tense, but then I encountered a sunbeam in a back stairwell.

The EyePA 30 has hand-drilled .23mm pinholes, on the axis and 11mm above it, 30mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Ilford HP5+ semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100.