Exhibit Depicts Times Square

The Cornell Department of Architecture is hosting an exhibition entitled Times Square: Reinventing The Fantasy, a project intended to capture the development of Times Square. The exhibition, which began on March 15 in the Hartell Gallery of Sibley Hall, will end on March 28.

“Times Square and 42nd Street have been America’s urban epicenter of fantasy life for a century,” declared Robin Noble and Lynn Saville, the artists who began the project eight years ago. They add, “For the past eight years we have photographed this fabled location as it has been reinventing itself in a drama more compelling then any play in a Broadway Theatre.”

Noble and Saville’s project focused on 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues and Broadway and 7th Avenues between 42nd Street and 47th Street. They photographed at dusk in order to capture both the essence and ethereal qualities of Times Square.

The cityscape photographs both in color and in black and white extend around the perimeter of the gallery. Each print exposes how disheveled building exteriors were transformed into the extravagant and elaborate advertisements of today’s Times Square.

“The exhibit takes a very specific angle, an innovative prospective on something that’s been seen over and over again,” said Tyler Peck ’06.

Saville, an architectural and landscape photographer, is a member of the teaching faculty at The International Center for Photography and at Parsons School of Design.

Noble, a New York City based freelance writer and photographer, has lectured at Columbia University and Parsons School of Design on the topic of Times Square.

Times Square: Reinventing The Fantasy is supported in part by a grant from the New York State Council of the Arts and in part by Cornell Department of Architecture.

Archived article by Anne Ceccarini