The Photographer of Michigan Modern - Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy (original) (raw)
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Preservation in Action
Whether or not you joined us for the Conservancy’s 2024 annual conference in Detroit, you might have noticed something about the photographs that we used to promote it. We always seek images that give potential attendees a good idea of what they’ll be seeing, which typically involves lining up photos taken by any number of different photographers.
But Detroit was different. In conversation after conversation, when we asked who had taken the best photos of a building, people said the same name: James Haefner. In fact, his photos are a key part of a major book on the state’s notable architecture, Michigan Modern.
Conservancy members had toured Turkel House in a dilapidated, pre-restoration state during our previous Detroit conference. We knew from early on that this preservation triumph would be one of our key conference tour sites, and that it was a strong candidate to be the “hero image” – the main visual calling card for the conference. Haefner’s photos capture its bold and luminous presence like no others.
Turkel House photos by James Haefner
The owners and stewards of many of the other houses we planned to tour, including houses by Wright and other architects of distinction, also pointed us to James Haefner. So of course we had to reach out to him. His response was very generous. So if you noticed that the photos of our 2024 conference tour sites were an unusually cohesive and beautiful body of work, now you know why!
If you would like to see more of James Haefner’s work – and explore 34 of Michigan’s most notable works of modernist architecture – we encourage you to seek out Michigan Modern: An Architectural Legacy, which is richly illustrated with his photos.
Left: Palmer House, top right: Smith House, bottom right: Affleck House photos by James Haefner
Top: Saarinen House, bottom left: Hawkins Ferry House, bottom right: McLucas House photos by James Haefner
Posted October 25, 2024