Baan Voyage

WHEN I WORKED AT the Los Angeles Times, a photographer colleague once told me that the assignment he dreaded most was shooting “building mugs.” This consisted of photographing the exterior of a building—often the headquarters of some international corporation—as a way of illustrating a story in which the human subjects were unwilling or unable to stand before the camera. Think of the myriad images of Purdue Pharma’s Stamford, Connecticut, headquarters that have been used to illustrate reports about the OxyContin scandal. In these, the building’s inverted ziggurat profile is frequently shown brooding and looming, often at dusk or at night. Since being introduced to the term, I find myself looking for these kinds of images while scanning headlines. Government buildings frequently appear in building mugs—from state houses to the Pentagon to the White House (though the bucolic gardens at the latter can mitigate the recriminatory mood). This year, building mugs of Boeing’s Arlington, Virginia, corporate campus have made regular appearances in news reports about safety pro…