Cone on Closed Soft-Serve Stand. US 6E, Carbondale, Pennsylvania

As Dow sought to refine and distinguish his vision, he experimented with different techniques. Here, he intentionally used the “wrong” lens for his large format camera.

Camera lenses produce circular images. Pictures are (generally) rectangles or squares because the camera’s film plane crops the images to fit that format.

Dow used a 150 mm lens with an 8- by 10-inch camera to create the vignetted, circular cropping seen here (and in several other photographs throughout the exhibition). This technique focuses attention on the structure, while also echoing some of its curvilinear forms.