NOTRE DAME DU HAUT
Our Lady of the Heights
Notre Dame du Haut is a Roman Catholic chapel in Ronchamp, France. Built in 1955, it is one of the finest examples of the architecture of Franco-Swiss architect Le Corbusier. The chapel is a working religious building and is under the guardianship of the private foundation Association de l’Œuvre de Notre-Dame du Haut. It attracts 80,000 visitors each year.
In 1950, when Corbusier was commissioned to design Ronchamp, the church reformists wanted to clear their name of the decadence and ornamental past by embracing modern art and architecture. Spatial purity was one of Corbusier’s main focuses by not over complicating the program and removing the typical modern aesthetic from the design.
Ronchamp sits among a wooded terrain secluded from the rest of the commune; the chapel is placed atop a hill on the site setting itself on a metaphorical pedestal giving Ronchamp added importance. Unlike most of Corbusier’s other works consisting of boxy, functional, and sterile volumes, Ronchamp is more of an irregular sculptural form where the walls, the roof, and the floor slope. Stylistically and formally it is fairly complex; however, programmatically it is relatively simple: two entrances, an altar, and three chapels.
The main concept is that i really appreciate about black and white photos because it creates a creepy dreamscape that makes pictures looks more dramatic. These are some black and white photography quotes by the famous photographer.
“Black and white is abstract; color is not. Looking at a black and white photograph, you are already looking at a strange world.” – Joel Sternfeld
“In black and white there are more colors than color photography, because you are not blocked by any colors so you can use your experiences, your knowledge, and your fantasy, to put colors into black and white.” – Anders Petersen
“I work in color sometimes, but I guess the images I most connect to, historically speaking, are in black and white. I see more in black and white – I like the abstraction of it.” – Mary Ellen Mark
“I think it’s because it was an emotional story, and emotions come through much stronger in black and white. Color is distracting in a way, it pleases the eye but it doesn’t necessarily reach the heart.” – Kim Hunter
“To see in color is a delight for the eye but to see in black and white is a delight for the soul” – Andri Cauldwell
“Color is descriptive. Black and white is interpretive.” – Eliott Erwitt
“What I love about Black & White photographs is that they’re more like reading the book than seeing the movie” – Jennifer Price
“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!”― Ted Grant
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