Chartres, Flying Buttresses at the Crossing

In a dizzying worm’s-eye view of Chartres Cathedral, Charles Sheeler found dynamic abstract beauty in the curving and intersecting forms of flying buttresses. His close cropping of the image created a taut and layered design of assertive lines and formal rhythms. This photograph demonstrates the radically new ways of seeing that some photographers pursued in the 1920s.

Through his fresh perspectives, drawn from his experiences photographing the skyscrapers of Manhattan, Sheeler discovered startlingly powerful geometries in this cathedral’s 13th-century forms. He climbed around the building’s exterior with his view camera and found a vantage point that simultaneously communicates the vertical thrust of the structural skeleton and the transfer of weight downward.