Rooftop with Ventilators 1942

Armin Landeck made this print, 'Rooftop with Ventilators', at some point in the mid-20th century. The process is all about the line here, isn’t it? Hatching and cross-hatching define every surface, creating a world of textures in monochrome. It gives this rooftop a strange density; you can almost feel the weight of it all. Look at the pipe snaking up from the bottom left. Landeck’s used these vertical lines to describe the cylindrical form, but also to flatten it. This tension between the real and the represented is what makes the print so engaging. The wooden ladder, for instance, is somehow both present and ghostly. This reminds me a little of Piranesi and his architectural fantasies, but with a distinctly American twist. Landeck’s rooftops are of this world, but also floating somewhere between the real and the imaginary. It’s a place where seeing becomes an act of construction, layering experience upon perception.