Lowry Mall
Stephen Bybee
Columbia, MO
1998
Lowry Mall at MU was one of my favorite places to photograph during my time in the art department. It was right out the back door of our building, it was somehow a space for people watching and for solitude, and the design of the Mall was inspiring and harkened to something older and more worldly. It was the kind of brick paved space one might find in a cosmopolitan European city, especially on a cold February night when the arched and mullioned windows of Ellis Library reflected brightly on a pool of rainwater. As a student in Professor Oliver Schuchard’s photography class at the time, creating this image on a black and white negative was the perfect demonstration of his concept of previsualization. This was a scene I had walked by many times during the day and at night, and after repeated visits, and after the necessary mental and artistic calculus had been performed, the image was finally ready to be created.