Diane Helentjaris "Eisenhower Building in Washington, D.C"
That morning I slid into DC with unanticipated time to spare. Even the security post guarding the entrance to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building posed no hindrance. I shoved my drivers’ license under the bullet-proof glass and the poker-faced guard quickly eyeballed my name on his computer screen. As a health advocate, I had been to the Eisenhower in the past. Looming five stories high, it threatens to overshadow the White House next door. But, happily, its massiveness is lightened by Victorian folderol and a very French mansard roof.
Walking down the dimly lit halls past anonymous wooden doors, it could have been 1890. Churchill had walked these floors; Nixon, too. I made my way to the snack bar. Grabbing a coffee and banana, I settled in at one of the government-issue tables scattered at the confluence of three hallways. Men in uniform chatted conspiratorially nearby. The only design elements for us snackers were an off-brand ATM machine and an advertising poster for the dining room. I pulled out the day’s agenda and, just before settling in to read it, looked up. It’s always good advice to look up. And there it was – a stairwell of balusters, balustrades and Greek columns swirling up to a skylight. Here amid the often-colorless world of government, a long-dead architect had left us a nautilus shell, a fractal. I took the photograph, refreshed by beauty.
Walking down the dimly lit halls past anonymous wooden doors, it could have been 1890. Churchill had walked these floors; Nixon, too. I made my way to the snack bar. Grabbing a coffee and banana, I settled in at one of the government-issue tables scattered at the confluence of three hallways. Men in uniform chatted conspiratorially nearby. The only design elements for us snackers were an off-brand ATM machine and an advertising poster for the dining room. I pulled out the day’s agenda and, just before settling in to read it, looked up. It’s always good advice to look up. And there it was – a stairwell of balusters, balustrades and Greek columns swirling up to a skylight. Here amid the often-colorless world of government, a long-dead architect had left us a nautilus shell, a fractal. I took the photograph, refreshed by beauty.
Diane Helentjaris is a photojournalist living in the piedmont of Virginia’s Blue Ridge mountains, just outside Washington, D.C. Her work frequently features the people and sights of her home, picturesque Loudoun County, where suburbanization has mixed with rural life to create a vibrant new culture. An Ohioan by birth, she earned her BA cum laude in Humanities and her MD from Michigan State and her MPH from the University of Michigan. After a career as a clinical physician, public health administrator and women’s health advocate, she thoroughly enjoys the expansion of her lifelong love of writing and photography.
|