Encounters with Denise Scott Brown's Wayward Eye

Back in 2018, London gallery Betts Project put on Wayward Eye, an exhibition of Denise Scott Brown's photographs taken between 1956 and 1966, spanning from Venice, Italy, to Venice, California, and Las Vegas, Nevada. Noted as her first solo exhibition in the UK, the show also sparked renewed interest in Scott Brown's photography, which was prominent in such projects as Learning from Las Vegas but waned in subsequent years as architecture and planning projects with her husband, Robert Venturi, took up more of her time. Many of the preoccupations of Venturi and Scott Brown—everyday architecture, iconography, Pop Art, etc.—can be seen in the photographs Scott Brown took with her first husband, Robert Scott Brown (died 1959), and later with Venturi in the decades of Encounters: Denise Scott Brown Photographs. The new book greatly expands on earlier displays of Scott Brown's photographs, providing a thematic presentation of a diverse and surprising body of work.

Izzy Kornblatt, a critic and PhD candidate at Yale who met Scott Brown in 2017, has organized the book's 383 photographs into nine thematic chapters: “Fleeting Moments,” “In Transit,” “Philadelphia,” “Ordinary Architectures,” “Extraordinary Architectures,” “The Grand Tour,” a second “Fleeting Moments,” “Las Vegas,” and “Picturesques.” The photographs were taken between 1952 and the mid-1970s, reaching from South Africa, where she was raised, to London, where she went to college, and Philadelphia, her adopted home, as well as California, Italy, Las Vegas, and other places. Although Kornblatt eschews a chronological arrangement in favor of a thematic one, there is still an autobiographical feel to the book as one moves through it, from cover to cover—as the images here are presented.

“In Transit” is a wide-ranging chapter, as it presents many different places—South Africa, Venice, California, New York City, and elsewhere—from the vantage point of cars, buses, and airplanes. A planner's detached gaze is visible in these images, especially the aerial views (above), but they are accompanied by on-the-ground shots that exude an appreciation of the everyday life of the street. One could even argue that the roots of Venturi's assertion that “Main Street is almost all right” is found in them.

“Philadelphia” is the first of two geographical chapters in Encounters. It is fitting, given that she moved there in 1958, completed her studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and would stay there after her graduation in 1960. Many of the photos are streetscapes of downtown, but there are some surprises, such as Scott Brown's postcard view of the house Robert Venturi designed for his mother in the early 1960s and quite a few images of Philadelphia's scarred urban fabric. Kornblatt singles out Scott Brown's striking photo of a vacant lot (below) in his essay in the middle of the book, describing the remnant of it on the surface of the neighbor as “a full-scale section drawing, complete with scale figures.”

Some foreshadowing can be found in the “Ordinary Architectures” chapter, specifically with Scott Brown's photographs of Levittown, New Jersey, one of the communities planned by Levitt & Sons in the 1950s and 1960s. Photos of the suburban landscape both under construction and completed (above) convey her appreciation of this everyday place where many Americans wanted to live. In 1970, a few years after the now famous Yale studio in Las Vegas, Venturi and Scott Brown led the Learning from Levittown studio, which asked students to consider the design, infrastructure, economics, and other aspects of suburban tract houses. Yet, earlier photos of cookie-cutter housing in Apartheid-era Soweto (below) complicate any easy readings of such apparently universal suburban landscapes.

Even though Scott Brown was drawn to Main Street and other “ordinary architectures,” there are enough photos of capital-A architecture to warrant a chapter with “Extraordinary Architectures.” We see buildings in such places as New York City, London, and California, with the last including Simon Rodia's Watts Towers, Greene & Greene's Gamble House, and Rudolph Schindler's Lovell Beach House (above). Although these are famous works of high architecture, they are documented by Scott Brown similarly to other places and subjects, with a style that is more documentary than architectural. A standout in the following, the second “Fleeting Moments” chapter, is Scott Brown's documentation of women in a village near Pretoria, South Africa, grading pathways and painting colorful patterns on earthen walls. Seemingly idyllic, Kornblatt describes the series of photos (below) as having “a fraught backstory,” given how the residents were relocated there and the land was not sufficient for them to subsist on.

While Encounters, again, does not have a chronological structure, the last two chapters have an abundance of photos taken in California and Las Vegas, where Scott Brown spent a lot of time in the second half of the 1960s. The latter is, of course, where the Learning from Las Vegas studio from Yale took place, and suitably the most recognizable of Scott Brown's photographs are found here, in the “Las Vegas” chapter (above). Befitting its name, the short “Picturesques” chapter is geographically diverse, ranging from Switzeland to Zimbabwe, but standing out among them are Scott Brown's colorful photos in Santa Monica, California. Among them are a number of photos of a painted car (below) that presages the Best Products Showroom she and Venturi would design in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, a decade later.

Now 93, Denise Scott Brown still lives in Philadelphia, giving online lectures and holding discussions with architects and scholars interested in her work, be it her buildings and master plans, writings, or—more so now, with the publication of Encounters—photography.