A building like the Cuyahoga County Courthouse cannot be captured in a single photograph. Masumi knew this. So she made two.

Where the first courthouse commission stretched more than six feet across—monumental scale for a monumental building—this second version takes a different approach. Smaller, more intimate, it focuses on specific architectural features rather than comprehensive documentation. Perhaps a detailed view of the entrance colonnade. Perhaps the relationship between marble and granite, ornament and structure. Perhaps simply a different angle on the same civic grandeur.

The two works were created together in 1986, during Masumi’s earliest period of commissioned architectural documentation. They represent different answers to the same question: how do you photograph a temple of justice? The larger version commands attention in institutional lobbies. This smaller version hangs in law offices and courtrooms, where lawyers and judges work within sight of the building that houses their profession’s ideals.

The “Version 1a” designation hints at Masumi’s working process—multiple iterations, refinements, the search for exactly the right perspective on a building that offers many possible perspectives. The courthouse’s Beaux-Arts symmetry invites the viewer to find that one perfect vantage point. Masumi’s method refuses this invitation, assembling multiple views into something richer than any single perspective could achieve.