Capitol Grandeur, Capitol Catastrophe

David Ottenstein and Robert Lisak’s 50-state photo journey, now on display in Goatville, assumes sudden newsworthy gravity.

The idea had been simply a Zoom interview about their new photo exhibit in our city, at mActivity Fitness Center on Nicoll Street.

But as David Ottenstein and Robert Lisak detailed what it took to create architectural images of all 50 American state Capitol buildings, the FBI announced that the very subjects of their work will soon become the sites, along with the U.S. Capitol, where later this week armed marauders will protest the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

This is the kind of timing that makes the rich sampling of their work at mActivity both ideal and disheartening. You can see for yourself in the exhibit what these potential battlegrounds look like, and what these civic temples, as Lisak refers to them, represent.

They are structures, the photographers say in their artist statement that ​“range in style and feeling from classical elegance, to robber baron ostentation, to practical simplicity, to symbolic modernism…” 

But even to the untrained architectural eye they express stability and honor — even if in reality they have also have hosted some of the uglier confrontations in our nation’s history.

Back in 2014, when Ottenstein and Lisak started a journey that took them six years and tens of thousands of miles, they were not intending to become newsworthy in this way.

This exhibit represents their first professional collaboration. They have known each other since taking Alan Trachtenberg’s history of photography class at Yale in 1980. As they pursued their own artistic visions in different geographies, their ideas to create capitol images seemed to meld.

“Our idea is for the viewers not to know which of us is responsible for the images they’re seeing,” Lisak said.

The two intend to collect their work for a book, still in the planning stages.

Their journey into American history enlightened them both.

“These civic temples are aspirational. I was blown away by what is visualized (in these places). Who matters? Who gets a say? You see it played out in paintings, sculpture and commemorative plaques,” Lisak said.

Some of the images remind us that desecrations of democracy and violations of human decency are not limited to modern times.

In Oklahoma City, Lisak said, a display ​“depicts the visual evidence of contending political forces. Oklahoma was kind of a concentration camp for Indian tribes. Now the Capitol has striking new art by Native Americans.”

In Columbia, South Carolina, a section of the capitol is devoted to the history of African-Americans from slavery through the civil rights movement, including unvarnished truths of horrific acts committed by white supremacists. Yet it is off to the side, not as prominent as the primary exhibit – of all things, the engraved Articles of Secession, the document that led directly to the Civil War.

The same placement problem is evident in Little Rock, Arkansas, where a dramatic and ambitious sculpture shows black schoolchildren in 1957 attending integrated classes for the first time. But its location is not as prominent as the work that honors Confederate soldiers.

In Frankfort, Kentucky, Jefferson Davis’ likeness shares a space with Abraham Lincoln, though the latter is larger and more prominent. In other southern state capitols, Ottenstein reported, any hint of the American president who issued the Emancipation Proclamation is nowhere to be found.

In the mActivity exhibit, our own state capitol building appears. Designed by Richard M. Upjohn and constructed from marble from East Canaan and Westerly, Rhode Island, the building was completed in 1878.

We think of it today – or at least until the threat of violence came – as a place of civil order where laws are introduced and passed. But it too reveals its own record of misfortune, prejudice and corruption.

Indeed, its very existence spawned controversy, as prior to that point both Hartford and New Haven considered themselves as capitals of the state, and harsh confrontations ensued, compromises proposed (Meriden, for example) before the singularity of Hartford was finally decided.

As for corruption and bribery, we had no shortage. We don’t have to go back very far in our history to recall the exploits of the 86th governor of our state, John G. Rowland. He was the first politician in the modern era to be elected three times to the top governmental post and the first to go to prison for ​“depriving the public of honest service” after accepting illegal gifts from state contractors.

More than a century before Rowland’s disgrace, our state’s most famous resident seemed to capture the public attitude toward political corruption and bribery. Commenting on the new capitol building in Hartford, Mark Twain said, ​“I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.”

But where past and present meet is perhaps no more evident than Michigan’s capitol in Lansing. There, we have already seen the excesses of President Donald Trump’s extremist followers, in both the occupation of the building months ago by armed protestors and the plot to kidnap and perhaps even murder Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Last week’s violence at the U.S. Capitol, which served as the architectural model for nearly half of our of the state capitol buildings, is a warning of what may be coming.

In Hartford, the news as I write this is that police have put up new barriers around the capitol building, and extra personnel have been assigned to the grounds.

“We will be ready, but I have a high degree of confidence that Connecticut will remain peaceful,” Gov. Ned Lamont said.

Perhaps his prediction will turn out to be accurate. I hope that’s the case. Yet even so, the collision between an America that has survived two and a half centuries of division and a president who has inflamed public discourse with lies and indefensible acts requires us to examine who we really are and what we stand for.

The images that Ottenstein and Lisak display are a good place to start.

For more information about the free exhibit, which runs through February, click here.