Artists Christo and Jeanne Claude’s ‘Gates’ in New York’s Central Park features nearly 100,000 square meters of saffron-colored rip-stop nylon, woven out of 187,311 kilometers of nylon thread in Germany into 7,500 fabric panels, which flutter down from tall arched gateways along 37 kilometers of the park’s paved pathways.
Word is that saffron madness has been taking over New York, with visitors to the exhibit, which opened Saturday, Feb 12, showing up in scarves, sweaters and jackets the shade of the expensive spice, which is gathered from crocuses. “I thought it would be cool to have the same color,” one woman told the New York Post. “It makes me think of peace and Tibet.”
Photographer Elizabeth Gentile, of Evergreen Studios, shot five fullscreen panoramas in the early afternoon of Tuesday, February 15, a day when over 200,000 visited the park, including U.S. First Lady Laura Bush. Elizabeth’s panos beautifully capture the saffron ribbon-fest unfurled throughout the park, and the sense of wonder it evokes in visitors.
More than one million people had taken in the exhibit in just the first six days and for some, it was a first visit to Central Park. That was the case with Elizabeth Gentile, who lives an hour drive away. "I usually shoot landscapes so the city was not a destination for me ever” she explains. “I had read or heard that many people who live in the city have never been to Central Park either but many of them were drawn to it now just because of Christo and Jeanne Claude's Gates.”
Shooting her panos on the fourth day of the 16-day exhibition, it was mild with a soft wind, “just enough to make the fabric on the gates gently waft” she recalls. “I think Christo and Jeanne Claude envisioned this when they devised their plan - the Gates resembling a river flowing, the supporting posts representative of the grid-like design of the City. They had worked on many sketches of their project prior to building it and this is what you see in them, the gentle blowing of the fabric.”
That seems to be exactly what they had in mind. "The luminous moving fabric will underline the organic design of the park, while the rectangular poles will be a reminder of the geometric grid pattern of the city blocks around the park," the artists say on their website. "The Gates will harmonize with the beauty of Central Park." Visit Wolfgang Volz’ ‘Gates Making’ webpage, and compare Drawing 2004 at the bottom of the page to Gentile’s Gates#2 pano; the resemblance is striking. “I wonder at the dedication these two people shared in their vision, to stay with it for over 25 years and then to have it all materialize” notes Gentile.
Christo and Jeanne Claude, both 69, financed the installation themselves – estimated to cost more than $20 million US. They will make no money from Gates-related goods being sold because they have donated merchandising rights to a local charity and the Central Park Conservancy. As with their other projects, the couple does not accept sponsorships or donations, choosing to finance their work through the sale of original lithographs and preparatory drawings, collages and scale models they make during the creation of their massive public installations.
Paid volunteers – mostly Christo fans, artists, architects, film workers and even former Texas governor Ann Richards – were paid $6.25 US per hour and given one hot meal per day to erect the project.
(For those living near Toronto, Canadian retail magnate Galen Weston, who has amassed one of North America's largest private collections of Christo's preparatory works, has lent his entire collection to the Art Gallery of Ontario for an exhibit, which runs to May 15, 2005.)
The Gates runs in Central Park (from 59th to 110th streets) from dawn until 1 a.m. Feb 12 through Feb. 27, after which it will be torn down.
(Check out the hooded man in the Gates#5 pano, with the odd-looking shoes. He’s a friend of Gentile’s who accompanied her to the park and wears the unique jogging shoes to save his knees from hurting. Apparently he attracted nearly as much attention as the Gates.)
Shoot Details:
Elizabeth Gentile: All of the panos were shot with a Nikon D70 digital slr camera and the Nikkor 10.5 mm fisheye lens. I used a sturdy Bogen/Manfrotto 3021 tripod, a generic ball head for leveling and the Jasper Engineering Pano Head 2 to set up with and snapped the shots using the Nikon remote to ensure sharpness (from less camera shake).
My desktop is a Mac Dual Processor 800 Quicksilver model with 1.25 gigs of ram. I used Nikon Capture to convert the raw format images to tif and also to defish and optimize exposure of all the shots. After NC I used Realviz Stitcher 3.5 to stitch the images. The resulting tif went to CubicConverter (Click Here Design) then Photoshop then to CubicNavigator (Click Here Design) for a test run and back to Cubic Converter, which I used to build and optimize the movies for the web. I also use Pleinpot (by Francis Gorge), a software program for the Mac that helps (thank goodness) to generate proper html pages for QuickTime VR.
I have found that using the Nikon Capture vs. Photoshop to convert from raw reduces the post processing to a minimum because the colors are kept more intact. Photoshop is invaluable for touching up and I like to add a curve or level and minimal color correction if necessary finishing up with unsharp mask.
Taking the pictures was never a problem, there were other photographers there also of course and they would ask what I was up to. The pan head always generates some curiosity because of its strange look. One German gentleman knew a little about VR and seemed impressed when he discovered these would be spherical panoramas - he even asked to take a few pictures of me for whatever reason, I thought this was amusing. I gave him my card with my website so that he could see them when they were done.
QTVR like this must be seen fullscreen for full impact; anything smaller cannot do it justice. The effect of this art display reaches right through the screen to people, something I never anticipated when taking and preparing these VRs. The reactions of many people when viewing these are of pure wonder and this is what we all hope to achieve isn't it? QTVR can do this - whether it is The Gates, the back yard, the surface of the moon or Mt Everest. Everyone who creates 360 VRs absolutely loves doing it and as far as I can see never tires of doing it because it is such a rush when, after all the work is done, we see the final product.
Gates sketch: © Wolfgang Volz 1970-2005 and © Christo 1970-2005
