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Tobacco barn photos at AIA

Date published: 12/26/2002

By Neva Trenis

Acclaimed architectural photographer Maxwell MacKenzie will return to the American Institute of Architecture Headquarters Gallery in Washington in January with a new series of color and black-and-white photographs documenting the tobacco barn. For the past three years, MacKenzie has traveled through eight states documenting these striking and increasingly rare structures.

More than 70 images will be featured in the exhibition. They range from large-format black-and-white panoramas to color aerial views of barns.

MacKenzie's survey of tobacco barns began in Port Tobacco, Md., and has broadened to include states from Kentucky to Connecticut. His photos document the various regional expressions of the tobacco-barn form as well as the different varieties of tobacco grown in each area.

In New England, MacKenzie found clusters of barns housing the highly prized cigar-wrapper leaves which are grown in shade. In the Chesapeake region, he found hinged and shuttered barns where a type of tobacco known as burley, a chewing and pipe variety, is hung to dry.

MacKenzie also documents the ever-encroaching suburban sprawl that, in many regions, threatens the survival of these simple examples of indigenous architecture.

When MacKenzie photographs his subjects from the ground, he creates dramatic black-and-white landscapes. He shoots aerial views while piloting his specially adapted ultralight aircraft.

--Neva Trenis

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Date published: 12/26/2002