passersby

permanent public art installation at a mixed-use building at lake avenue, pasadena, ca
client: the hanover company, commissioned for the pasadena public art program

our installation utilizes four architectural steel/glass canopies that mark the primary entrances and spread out along the facade of the building. we transformed these architectural elements into a light-box construction that illuminates a continuous glowing band of photographs.

images of different people who responded to a public call for participants cover the bottom side of the glass canopies. the photographs show people walking and standing, as seen from above, and vary in scale according to the different installation height of each canopy.

we continued this topic with a corresponding element embedded in the side walk beneath the canopies: we constructed the “shadow” of each depicted “passerby”, as if each person that is shown on the canopies above was standing in exactly this position on the sidewalk right underneath it. the resulting fake “shadows” are traced and permanently captured by embedding the shadow shapes in the sidewalk using concrete stain and cutting shadow outlines into the concrete.

together the photographs and the shadows of these “passersby” created a hypothetical urban population, as might be found on such a busy intersection as lake avenue and green street.