State Street Bank, 1964-1965

I have thousands of negatives from my year of work as progress photographer on the State Street Bank and Trust building, the first of the skyscrapers built in Boston's financial district. I've been scanning them with an eye to making a Blurb book, but find myself overwhelmed by the scale and scope of the project, and so wonder if there's any sensible Web presentation for the project. Here's one example, drawn more or less at random from the images.

The clarity of the images is stunning, more than 50 years later, and their content might tell viewers a great deal about the construction process and materials, the safety precautions of earlier times, the working conditions, the organization of contracting and subcontractors, and any number of other facets of the process that I've scarcely imagined. But how to structure the presentation? How, even, to begin to create an organization for so rich and sprawling a body of images?

I had completely free access to the site, needing only to don a hard hat and wander around with camera in hand. I shot entirely on spec, and submitted contact sheets to the main contractor (Gilbane and Co., still very much in business) and then a few days later delivered prints of the images selected. I think I was paid $4 per print, which at the time seemed munificent. The vast majority of my images were of no interest to Gilbane (I never did figure out what they really wanted pictures of), but I happily exercised my eye and hand with whatever seemed visually appealing. I did a lot of pictures of workmen, and frequently made 4x6 prints to give to them (they were delighted).

Among the facets I notice as I turn the body of images this way and that: