Architectural Photography In Focus

I went to one of the visiting lectures at the A.A last night. Six  professionals working with architectural photography or related fields were given the opportunity to present their work. 

Iwan Baan the influential Dutch photographer has over the last couple of years been documenting the construction of both OMA's CCTV building and Herzog & de Meuron's birds nest. His background in documentary photography is apparent in the work. In his photographs he considers the relationship between the building and it's surroundings and many times the architecture  becomes just the backdrop in the photograph. His photographs from the CCTV building shows the workers living on the site and ordinary families living in the shadow of these monumental building. This is interesting and it would be nice to see more photo like this featured in architectural magazines.

Helene Binet, (picture above) talked a lot about choosing what to represent of the buildings and the difficulty around this. Her work involves details and simplicity . She plays with shadows, texture, light and dark often by photographing the same space  twice in different light or emphasizing different detail.

Altogether it was a very interesting talk with discussions around the impact of the client, how photography in itself might have influenced the architects and about the history of architectural photography and the change over time. 

see more here

pic from the A.A web