Gramercy Park, New York: April 24, 1997

Vera Lutter is well-known for her straight-forward, monumental photographs of urban landscapes, historic monuments, and industrial sites created with a camera obscura (“dark room” in Latin), a device which was used to produce direct images of reality before the invention of photography. A camera obscura is made by creating a small opening in an otherwise sealed room or chamber. Light from an external source penetrates the opening, which acts as a lens, and is cast, upside down, on an opposite surface. Lutter hangs black-and-white photographic paper on the opposite wall to capture the image. The resulting pictures are one-of-a-kind paper negatives. Gramercy Park, New York is an early example of this process.