Two A.M. 1942

Cooper Nott Lansing made this stone lithograph, a print called Two A.M. The scene shows a team of firemen trying to put out a fire in the dead of night; that one fellow with the axe is really going for it! It makes me wonder how Lansing arrived at this composition. Did he plan it all out beforehand or let it emerge more organically? You can almost see him squinting in the dark, trying to capture the chaos of the scene and all the different tonal gradations he finds. What I find so interesting is the contrast between the precision of the lines and the overall sense of movement and urgency, that ladder going up, up into the smoke and chaos! You get the impression that Lansing isn't just recording what he sees, he's trying to evoke a feeling, a mood, a sense of place and time, as if to say, "Remember that night?"