20 November 2015

Petrosian's 'Dining Room'?

I can't explain why I like this photo. Because it's a tribute to a former World Champion? Because it looks like a typical chess club of yesteryear? Because it's perfect for a serious tournament? All of the above? Something else? Like I said, I can't explain it.


Tigran Petrosian Chess House, Yerevan © Flickr user Rob Schofield under Creative Commons.

The caption added,

House of Chess Players, Yerevan
Architect: Zhanna Meshcheryakova
Built: 1970

On top of typical tags like Yerevan, Armenia, Russian, and architecture, the photo had more tags like modernist, concrete, and brutalist. A Flickr search on tags=brutalist+chess brings up a few related photos by the same photographer, who carries a '[PRO]' designation next to his name. His personal site, Rob Schofield Photography, has a category titled 'Brutalist/Social Housing' that explains the subject, although the photos there are far less charming than the Flickr chess photos. A few years ago, I did an eBay post, Brutalism in Chess, which might be worth exploring some day.

While I was preparing this current post, I discovered that Flickr tags could be combined on search, like tags=petrosian+chess. More interesting than that search is tags=art+chess, which delivers all sorts of ideas for Caissart-style posts.

My previous Flickr post, It's All About Pattern Recognition, introduced the subject of gray & white tags. For this current photo, the Flickr robots suggested that the photo be tagged 'dining room'.

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