Outdoors indoors

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The attendant at the glass-walled Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, told us when we visited on November 8th that we’d missed the peak color by from several days to a week. As a result, the “standard” horizontal panoramic photograph taken inside the chapel looking toward the front, whether with green or gold foliage visible through the glass, was out of the question. Instead, I went for this unconventional view in which opposite outsides merged: the outside behind me was reflected in the glass in front of me at the same time that the outside in front of me was visible through the glass. Also notice the way the straight lines of the chapel’s architecture contrasted with the forms of nature, in which straight lines are rare, and the way the brown of the wood used for the chapel’s interior harmonized with the colors of the tree trunks and the drying leaves outside.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman