Wright Panorama
Foreword by Eric Lloyd Wright
Photography by Thomas R. Schiff

BUY "WRIGHT PANORAMA"

The Westcott House Foundation and Lightborne Communications partnered on publishing “Wright Panorama,” the panoramic photography by Thomas R. Schiff of Frank Lloyd Wright landmarks in the United States. (Orange Frazer Press, $49.95). Proceeds from the sale of this book will support Frank Lloyd Wright public sites and their educational missions.

Wright Panorama amplifies the artistry of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture with expanse. In the more than 140 Tom Schiff panoramic photographs contained in Wright Panorama, Schiff reveals nearly eighty extant buildings in Wright’s oeuvre from a unique perspective. Wright Panorama exhibits the great architect’s prolific, varied, and iconic body of work, pulling from it a new shape and offering it renewed appeal. Eric Lloyd Wright’s compelling foreword to Wright Panorama introduces Tom Schiff and four noteworthy Frank Lloyd Wright scholars—Cara Armstrong, Scott W. Perkins, Margo Stipe, and Marta Wojcik. Since Wright’s architecture embraced his strong belief in and respect for Nature, these scholars draw from this and contribute essays from a new nature-centric perspective. They further our understanding of the ways each of the natural elements—earth, air, fire, and water influences Wright’s life and work. In addition, these four essays utilize Schiff ’s images to more fully illustrate the involvement of the natural elements on Wright’s organic architecture. In his preface to Wright Panorama, Schiff conveys his desire to acknowledge the “true” as well as extend our framework of seeing, of vision. Schiff likes that his panoramic photography is “true to the landscape as seen by the naked eye” and is both “expansive” and “challenging.” He sees the resulting panoramic image in Wright Panorama as “a unique way to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s interiors and exteriors, from all vantage points, in one image.” Wright Panorama is a continual discovery: A new way of viewing, a new way of discovering the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.

 

Tom Schiff’s photographs are extensions in space of the character of the building. They also unfold details and forms not normally found in standard photographs. I am continually discovering new elements in the building I had not noticed before.
Eric Lloyd Wright, Architect and Grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright

 

 

Tom Schiff’s photography reveals the buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright in a unique elliptical universe. His meticulous and beautiful images provide curving contexts, both interior and exterior, in which the moving eye and our changing perceptions become vividly active in a fresh way of looking at the work of a master architect.
—Anthony Alofsin, AIA

 

 

Tom Schiff, by applying his extensive knowledge of the panoramic photograph, and color, has given us his unique view of the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.
—Philip Trager, Photographer

 

 

In his panoramic photographs scrupulously examining the surfaces of these quintessential American structures, Tom Schiff reveals Mr. Wright’s outsize genius, while simultaneously adapting and reordering these icons for his own artistic purposes. If Julius Schulman and Ezra Stoller were the consummate masters of architectural photography of the twentieth century, Schiff’s voluptuous Wright photographs in our own time anchor him firmly in this rich lineage of artists.
—James Crump, Curator and Department Head of Photography,Cincinnati Art Museum

 

About Thomas R. Schiff
A photographer since childhood, Thomas R. Schiff has worked in various photographic formats for the past forty years. He turned greater attention to the medium when studying at Ohio University under renowned photographers Clarence White, Jr. and Arnold Gassan. His early photography featured black-and white images focused on architectural detail, storefront facades, and windows. In 1994, Tom began using the panoramic format in his photography as a new way to express his artistic vision, saying, “What interests me is essentially the proportional angle in the horizontal format. Sometimes a picture’s most critical factor is when it changes your relationship to what is familiar or thought to be understood.” For his panoramic photographs, the camera is mounted to an extended tripod and rotates 360 degrees or more upon its axis, exposing film in a continuous strip as it turns. Tom has used his Hulcherama 360 Panoramic Camera to create four books of photographs, all of which included a touring exhibition: Panoramic Cincinnati (1999), Panoramic Ohio (2002), Panoramic Parks (2005) and Vegas 360 (2008). Tom continues his cross-country touring to photograph with a focus on architecture for future publications, including works on historic theatres, civic buildings, religious spaces, and the mid-century architecture of Columbus, Indiana.

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