Morgan Spaulding

Photographs of bricks in Cambridge, MA. A set of loose guidelines were taken for creating these photographs: Each photograph must contain two or more seperate buildings, the buildings must visually overlap, and material other than brick is cropped out of the composition. It was observed that bricks tend to visually merge together horizontally. This is due to the fact that they are stacked horizontally. For the purposes of this project, brick facades were abstracted into horizontal lines, becoming flight lines. This is part of what creates the confounding effect of these images.

A map of Cambridge, MA illustrates the concentration of bricks in Cambridge. Areas of higher concentration are shaded darker. The purpose of doing this was to locate areas for photographing brick adjacency, following the rules outlined above. The locations of brick buildings were recorded on map (inset). Then, the footprint of each brick building was enlarged until it intersected with the footprint of a non-brick building. 

The color red lends uniformity across individual bricks and across the fabric of the city. In aggregate, the preponderance of bricks in Cambridge creates an overall effect of conformity and coherence. Bricks want conformity. They are always part of a larger entity. On the scale of a wall, a building, or a city, the individual brick is always in conversation with bricks as a whole.