Smithsonian Sculpture Garden

Author's Comments

The garden sits between the Mall and the National Gallery, a sunken rectangle most people walk past without descending into. I find that strange and also useful. Late afternoon in October is when I come most often, when the sun gets low enough to rake across the lawn and the sculptures start throwing shadows longer than themselves. Oldenburg's typewriter eraser is the obvious subject and it does catch the light beautifully, the bristles reading almost like hair at the right hour. But it is Bourgeois's spider I keep returning to. Shot from below with the sky behind her, she becomes architecture - all leg and negative space, the clouds moving through her as if she were a window rather than an object. Winter is the other season worth knowing. The central pool converts to a skating rink, and the geometry of the garden changes completely. Skaters in motion against the still weight of the sculptures is a photograph I have made badly several times and I expect I will keep trying. A longer lens helps. So does patience for the moment when a skater's arc lines up with a piece behind them. The garden is small enough that you can work it in an hour and large enough that the light will have moved meaningfully by the time you are done. Come at golden hour and stay through the blue that follows. The lamps come on and the sculptures hold their shapes against a darkening sky, and for about fifteen minutes the place feels nothing like the Mall it sits inside.

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