Interview

Interviewer:

Photo muralist Paula Barr took these views of Manhattan Island entitled North, South, East, and West from high above the city at different times of the day. The photos were made into a mural two-feet-high by 52-feet-long and installed in the Long Island Rail Road's ticket booth in Penn Station where it's seen by thousands of commuters each day.

Paula Barr:

The impact of a large mural is not unknown to us historically. People walked into churches for a certain kind of effect. It was used politically. It was used as a seduction. It was used for many different reasons. We used a large scale, the murals, to create an effect, to create an intention in what we do. The murals at Penn Station were used for people who waited in lines a long time. So we go in and there's a result that's demanded. And the scale of the murals is so that effect and that result is reached. The Long Island Rail Road ticket booth seemed manageable. It seemed like you could control a large image in a very highly trafficked place. More than 250,000 people a day go past that location. So we spent about two or three months discussing what kind of imagery would work because as you see, the people stand about 14 feet away from the image and there's Plexiglas in front of it, so you want something that is impactful yet someone who's standing 30 to 40 feet away can see.

Interviewer:

Although the mural is located several hundred feet below the ground, the photos were taken almost 70 stories above ground. One Penn Plaza is an office building adjacent to Penn Station, and Paula Barr's concept was to give the commuters who would be viewing the mural a sense of place. The rooftop panorama of Manhattan would replace her audience's daily routine of crowded indoor environments with a unique perspective of a city. Security clearance and insurance waivers preceded a 67-floor elevator ride and another several floors on foot for Paula and her assistant before they were confronted by a sight that few people get to witness.

Paula Barr:

Wow. It's really spectacular today. Look at the light. Yeah, so we'll shoot the north when the sun sets, because that's the most magical time since all the building lights will be on. This will be our last shot.

Paula Barr:

Okay. We looked at what was available, that there were low railings and that we could not standardize our camera. We'd have to walk to each location, north, south, east, and west. And then we looked at the times of the day and the kind of color. We had done some test shots before. And we had a pretty clear shooting idea, almost a shooting script of how we were going to get these images. The desire for the four murals was that they would be able to stand alone as images. And also that the colors would be very distinct, that the sunset is very gold and the night shot is very blue.

The others are brown and I just wanted them to have a different color base. So they would be distinct. Working with a panoramic camera allows you an enormous amount of flexibility in the field as opposed to shooting with an eight ten or a four five. The panoramic camera gives you a chrome, which is six by 17 centimeters, which is two-and-a-quarter-inches high by almost seven inches. So you're getting as much information out of a crop as you would on an eight ten. And it also gives you that kind of formatting that is necessary often for the kinds of murals we're doing.

Give me an eighth of a second.

You can also handhold it as opposed to a large format camera. You get four shots out of a roll of two-and-a-quarter film. So you also have to shoot very methodically and you have to really gauge your shooting because you're only getting four shots on a roll. You're constantly changing film. Okay. This is our last shot. We'll have to change film in a minute. Let's go. Cock the shutter. To keep taking readings as the sun goes down. Give it to me. F eight and a half.

Paula Barr:

Okay. Are you advanced to one? You are. Okay.

The thing that's very important too, in getting the results we get with the kind of detail we need is that every shot is meticulously produced. It's teamwork, really teamwork. When you see a 20-foot mural, there's scores of people that have been involved in it. So it really is teamwork. And the communications between the team is evident in the end result. It's very important to have that kind of communication all the time.