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“Architectural photography can present a familiar building and living space in a specific way, and in doing so, influence our view of them” (Mattens, 2011). In an essay for the book “Constructing Worlds”, David Campany outlines the relationship between photography and architecture and how “the experience of architecture may now be inseparable from the experience of its imagery, and that photography may now belong to the very same networks of the spectacle” (Pardo and Redstone, 2015).
Right from the birth of the camera, photographers have documented, heroised, preserved and critiqued architecture and our built environment. Photographer Lucien Hervé’s abstract monochromic chiaroscuro images of iconic modern architecture created by Le Corbusier; the architect felt that Hervé “had the soul of an architect”, and is a demonstration of the inter-relationship between the visual aesthetics of the built form to that of the photograph. While photographers such as Ed Ruscha and Stephen Shore adopted a more documentary style as they explored the everyday vernacular architecture of America, elevating the ordinary street scenes, industrial parks, gas stations and car parks, to create a visual narrative of human-made structures that in turn have shaped our lives. Hilla and Bernd Becher focused their view camera on the non-architecture of industrial Europe, their technical perfection and meticulously catalogued collection of water towers, storage silos and industrial functional constructs that they referred to as “anonymous sculptures”, elevated the mundane into fine art. This list of photographers whom I admire would not be complete without mentioning Walker Evans who’s objective approach to our built environment has been the inspiration for countless photographers treading in his shadow, and finally a nod to Thomas Struth, a student of the Becher’s and a master of street architecture. I feel that all these photographers have had profoundly influenced the genre of architectural photography and how our built environment is represented.
I end this post with a statement from Eric de Maré, “The photographer is perhaps the best architectural critic, for by felicitous framing and selection he can communicate direct and powerful comments both in praise and protest. He can discover and reveal architecture where none was intended by creating abstract compositions of an architectonic quality” (Woods, Thompson, Williams,1972).
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Pardo,A. and Redstone,E. eds. 2015. “Constructing Worlds, Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age”. Prestel, London.
Mattens,F. 2011. “The Aesthetics of Space: Modern Architecture and Photography”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 69, no. 1, pp. [Online] [Accessed 8th January 2018 from: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.herts.ac.uk/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2010.01451.x/abstract
Woods,G.,Thompson,P., Williams,J. eds.1972. “Art without Boundaries”. LondonThames and Hudson, London.
