Wesely, Michael. Open Shutter: The Museum of Modern Art by Michael Wesely.

MoMA, 2004. Hardcover, illustrated boards with black cloth spine, not issued with dust jacket. [Photos are of the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, taken from several different angles during the renovation of 2001-2004. German photographer Wesely's unusual technique is to use a small hole to expose negatives for an unusually long time, sometimes for years.] Like new.  Summary:

Open Shutter: The Museum of Modern Art (2004) is a unique photographic monograph by German artist Michael Wesely. The book documents the multi-year transformation of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) during its major renovation and expansion by architect Yoshio Taniguchi between 2001 and 2004.

The Technique: Ultra-Long Exposure

The defining characteristic of the book is Wesely’s use of extreme long-exposure photography. Using custom-built pinhole cameras, Wesely kept the shutters open for months—and in some cases, years—at a time.

• Capturing Time: Unlike traditional photography that freezes a fraction of a second, these images collapse years of activity into a single frame.

• The "Ghost" Effect: Because only static objects remain clear, the cranes, workers, and changing weather appear as ethereal streaks of light and "ghost" structures.

Key Visual Themes

• Layers of History: The photographs show the old museum building being stripped away while the new structure slowly rises in its place, with both versions of the building superimposed upon each other.

• The Passage of Light: The sun’s path across the sky over several years creates vibrant, rhythmic arcs of light that cut across the urban landscape.

• Architectural Evolution: The book serves as a "metabolic" record of architecture, depicting the building as a living, breathing entity that evolves rather than a static object.

Content and Production

• Essays: The book features introductory texts by MoMA curators (such as Sarah Hermanson Meister) that provide context on both the architectural project and Wesely’s place in contemporary photography.

• Format: Published by Steidl in conjunction with MoMA, the book is noted for its high production quality, necessary to capture the complex tonal ranges and dense detail of Wesely’s large-format plates.

Significance

Open Shutter is considered a masterpiece of time-based photography. It challenges the fundamental definition of the medium as a "decisive moment," instead presenting photography as a way to visualize the invisible flow of time and the monumental labor involved in reshaping a world-class cultural institution.