Around the time Ueda began shooting handheld with a 35mm Leica in addition to his large-format 8 x 10, an architectural magazine sent him to photograph heritage works of America’s most beloved architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Selecting from masses of 35mm images, this monograph reflects the photographer’s own feelings toward Wright’s two greatest masterpiece houses, Fallingwater and Taliesin.
Architectural photography for the fun of it Toward more flexible camerawork “Once during a conversation about architectural travel photography, I remember telling the president of X-Knowledge publications, Sei’ichi Sawai, how I’d always wanted to see a Frank Lloyd Wright first-hand. The one day out of the blue I got a phone call, ‘We’re doing a special feature on Frank Lloyd Wright, interested in shooting Wright’s buildings?” He didn’t have to ask twice. In the course of our discussion, I suggested that a 35mm camera might be best, saying my Leica was obviously the right camera for the Wright job (laugh). “Was I ever excited! It would be my first time shooting architecture. The choice of a 35mm over a large-format camera puzzled him initially, but then who knows how many large-format exposés on Wright’s architecture had already been done and I wanted to have a freer hand shooting. I’d been shooting 35mm since having children, and I’d really come to enjoy the light feel. People associated me with 8 x 10 photography, so even Sawai must have been secretly surprised but readily agreed. “I flew to Chicago in the autumn of 2002. I had it in my head to also document the architectural survey trip itself, so I began by shooting our takeoff from Narita Airport, then as we approached Chicago I took an aerial photo of the distinctly American highway-scape ribbonned with toy trucks and cars below. The instant I clicked the shutter for that symbolic starting image, I knew that 35mm had indeed been the right choice. From then on until the end of the trip I was snapping away the whole time. “Of course it goes with saying that seeing Fallingwater was a moving experience. My finger was on the shutter nonstop, I wanted to get photos of everything. It was probably the most fun I ever had as a photographer, made all the more real by my Leica. So this was ‘fun photography!’ My gut feeling about taking this trip were spot on; I had longed for this kind of freedom and flexibility in relation to photography, to be able to shoot my surroundings without pressure or fixed ideas. The trip felt like a self-experiment, a test-run to see how free I could be. As a result, I came to enjoy taking photographs in a more flexible way. “Midway on the trip, I took one very memorable image that still means a lot to me. One morning, while photographing Wright’s home Taliesen East, I was out in the courtyard when it started to drizzle. In a corner of the yard a lonely little plant seemed to sprout up with such fervent will to live. I aimed and saw the fresh green leaves glistening with raindrops. It was so lovely, I snapped the shutter without another thought. That photograph is now one of my treasures. “After the trip, I holed up in the darkroom and spent the next few days printing my images. When Sawai saw the hefty armload of photos, he just muttered with a grin, ‘Looks like we’ve got ourselves a book.’”
from the "Photographer Interview" section of the FujiFilm homepage (used with permission)
