Impact of Photography on Modern Architecture

IMPACT OF PHOTOGRAPHY ON ARCHITECTURE

Acknowledgements My passion for photography and interest towards the subject kept me going through this dissertation.

I would like thank the following people for all their vital help in making this dissertation possible.

Mr. Jatinder Marwaha, my internal guide for helping me open up my mind in this field and to let me have a consensus to take the topic in the desired direction.

Prof. Ranjana Mittal and Prof. Jayakumar in letting me choose this topic and providing valuable suggestions through the research process.

Ar. Sanjay Bharadwaj, Ar. Rajeev Agarwal, Mr. Ram Rahman and Mr, Asim Waqif for providing their views which gave me a different perspective on my research.

I would personally like to thank Ar. Maniyarasan and my batchmates for their indispensible inputs at various stages during the research.

I am most especially grateful to my parents, R.S.Krishnaswamy and S, Deivanai and my sister, S. Udhaya Vauhini, for their guidance, support and extraordinary courage.

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Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... 2 1.

INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 5 1.1 Preface .................................................................................................................... 6 1.2 Need Identification ................................................................................................... 8 1.3 Scope of Study ....................................................................................................... 10 1.4 Limitations.............................................................................................................. 11 1.5 Methodology .......................................................................................................... 12

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PHOTOGRAPHY AND ARCHITECTURE ................................................................ 13 2.1 Brief History of Architecture Photography ............................................................... 14 2.2 The Purpose of Photography.................................................................................. 18 2.3 Nature of Photography ........................................................................................... 20 2.4 Advent of Digital means ......................................................................................... 23 2.5 Photographs as Icons............................................................................................. 25

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THE CAMERA .......................................................................................................... 27 3.1 A Brief History of the Camera ................................................................................. 29 3.2 A Tool to Communicate .......................................................................................... 32 3.3 Evolution of Digital Camera .................................................................................... 34 3.4 New Dimensions of Digital Innovation .................................................................... 36

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3.5 Photography as a Language .................................................................................. 38 3.6 Photography in Media ............................................................................................ 39 4.

CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................................................... 42

Questionnaire .................................................................................................................. 45 Appendix A ...................................................................................................................... 46 Interview 1 ................................................................................................................... 46 Interview 2 ................................................................................................................... 50 Interview 3 ................................................................................................................... 53 Interview 4 ................................................................................................................... 57 Appendix B ...................................................................................................................... 61 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 63 Table of Figures .................................................................................................................. 65

Front and back cover: The Nest Stadium, Beijing, photographed by Iwan Baan, www.iwan.com; Used only for academic purposes

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1. INTRODUCTION

Figure 1: Julius Shulman, Case Study House #22., Gelatine silver print, 1960

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1.1 Preface “There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.” - Ernst Haas The world of photography is changing. Ever since photography has been invented, men have been trying to make the best out of it as a tool, dreaming of new ways to make it what human eyes cannot, of speeding time or slowing it down to learn how things behave actually. The traditional methods are being replaced my digital means, thus creating an ease of this art form. Experimental photography has given us vast options to express the idea. This form of visual art fascinates any observer that is open to appreciating its manifestation and discerning the hard work that went into its creation.

Architecture can be appreciated in various mediums, styles, dates and so on. People; generally don't take the time to evaluate an architectural work the way it should be evaluated - as a work of art, with functionality. Its scope is difficult to grasp as a normal person. It is therefore the architect‘s responsibility to present the work the way he wants it to be interpreted. This is where the architect looks into different media for expressing his ideology and work, thus photography being one of the closest and the most efficient form of universal media in the modern day world; it has been exploited in course of time. Moreover, image editing, with the advent of computers and technology helps in the present times by letting the architects express certain features that cannot just be communicated using a raw image.

This is the image of a lifestyle statement that made Shulman‘s career, a black-and-white photo taken of a glass and steel frame home built by architect Pierre Koenig in the Hollywood Hills above Laurel Canyon Boulevard as the sun was setting on May 9, 1960.

With such great potential, in the early stages of its development and with the coming of modern digital means photography sure had a vital role to play as a visual media.

Photography has globalized architecture, thus bridging the gap between various architectural communities in this world. In the current scenario, the digital age has made this mode of

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graphic communication easily available for the layman, giving him opportunities to explore and exploit. The internet that has come along has opened up new platforms for sharing. With social networking sites and photo sharing sites one also gets more reasons to click and also to critique and analyse different works. A photograph which is considered architectural in one context might not in another. Though these trends have created new paths to express and communicate architecture, the scope of exploiting has to be checked, as its misuse has its own consequences. Proper application of this tool, understanding its limitations, according to the motive is essential. Various components of this language have to be employed with utmost care so as to achieve the desired outcome. Being one of the most simple and efficient modes of graphic communication in the current day scenario the probability of it being abused is high.

Four years after its discovery in 1839, the following appeared in a London Magazine, “Photography is a young art, but from its present aspect, we can judge what power it will have in its maturity.” – Household Words, Charles Dickens.

Considering the above statement, the power of photography as a tool of visual communication has grown with experimentation and incoming of modern technology.

Looking at photography from an architectural point of view, buildings are photographed primarily to be documented, sold or advertised. Does a space feel the same as good as it looks in a photograph? Or has the building just been made to look good in the photograph?

Do the contemporary architects aim all their activities toward getting to the magazine cover and not worrying whether the building will last beyond the photographers shooting session?

The intent of the photograph needs to be studied.

Research Question:

How do the current trends in Photography impact Modern Architecture?

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1.2 Need Identification Architects and photographers both work with space, yet they approach their tasks from opposite directions. The architect‘s practice moves from two dimensions into three, and the photographer‘s from three dimensions into two. For the most part the architect imagines and renders spaces that do not yet exist, and then shepherds them into being. The photographer, conversely, documents things that already exist in time and space and abstracts them into flat depictions. When a photographer takes an architect‘s finished product and transforms it, both the concept of the original place in its idealized, drawn form, and the formal reality of its existence converge into one image.

Since the development of photography, architects have well understood this dynamic. Many, for this reason, have taken an intense interest in how their buildings are presented in photographs. Le Corbusier, famously, often airbrushed away all of the contextual information from photographs of his buildings, such as plants and the surrounding terrain, before he allowed them to be published. The term ―architectural photography‖ generally means work made with a large-format camera that corrected the third point perspective lines in pictures that celebrate the architect‘s vision—and depicts the building in factual terms.

Modernism is the first movement in the history of art to be intertwined with photography, its information shared and education achieved largely through photographs. Architects and laypeople alike feel they know a building through pictures of it rather than through personal experience or conventional books.

As photography can be regarded as the closest medium of effective visual communication for architecture, the layman has to be assured that he gets the right information. The major reason for this dilemma is the advent of digital means that have made this language easily available for exploitation. The digital camera has been compacted, perfected and revolutionised and in due course, made easily available in the markets for an individual to purchase to explore. With these developments in photography the architects also get the

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advantage to present and publicize their work extensively through architecture magazines, online blogs and other digital media. Thus, the misuse can result in abuse of both art forms.

The impact of photography due to its universalization and easy availability for exploitation in the field of architecture, its pros and cons have to be qualitatively analysed and reasoned out to draw results for general awareness, thus avoiding abuse of both art forms.

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1.3 Scope of Study This dissertation will strive to understand how architecture and photography as entities of design have mutually contributed to the developments in their respective fields. It will also be focusing at how architecture is perceived, understood and pioneered through the medium of photography and vice versa. Owing to the subjective nature of the topic, the study will be based on qualitative facts. The research will be done with respect to the Indian context.

As the study is to understand imagery and its perceptions, I will rely on existing examples illustrated by various other authors. The chosen illustrative examples will comprise of images of buildings for this study.The dissertation will include both black and white and colour photographs in film as well as digital means since in the context of study only the final imagery produced is important. Images processed through the computer are also to be part of the study.

This dissertation is not aimed at providing guidance regarding the technical aspects of photography like shutter speed, aperture, filters, focal lengths, lens details, film chemistry, digital censors etc.

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1.4 Limitations On a subject like ‗photography and architecture‘ in order to reach to any substantial conclusion or to establish a system of thought, requires an appropriate and thorough study supplemented by virtually unlimited images. The background study that includes history of architecture and photography are to be looked at briefly as the whole study would be a separate research by itself. In the given timespan for this research it will not be able for me to go through the whole history of this field, the case studies are through conducting interviews with photographers and architects, thus looking at the real life situation, where a qualitative analysis will be made and conclusions would be drawn out from analysis of those interviews.

As far as perception of a photograph is concerned, there can never be rules as it may not be the same for everyone. This also makes it difficult to draw any common base line and generalities. The limitation of my knowledge and skill of photography makes me illequipped to deal with certain issues.

Also the study of photography is very complex and technical branch of study in itself.

Keeping in mind the timespan it would not be possible to discuss the issues related with equipment and technicalities which directly affect the outcome of the photograph.

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1.5 Methodology A study that revolves around architectural photography and perception needs a systematic approach that demands appropriate research methodology tools that can help draw conclusions. The approach starts with the literature survey and study followed by developing tools that can help me in my research methodology which in turn assists me draw conclusions.

The literature survey primarily includes an initial reading from library sources like books, journals and the internet. This gives me a basic idea to what has been done in my field of research and helps me look into that part where I can proceed with my research, thus refining my research question.

The approach also included looking into images of different photographers and understanding certain methodologies applied in obtaining the final image. The intent was to keep myself aware of certain technical aspects of the subject. As this literature study is to be the backbone of my study various aspects of photography and its use as a tool to perceive architecture are included.

Documentation is to be done in two parts. The first part includes compilation of information from secondary resources, to understand briefly the history of architecture and photography and use of photographic imagery for the same due to the nature of the topic. By creating a timeline, the research will be looking at certain cases wherein photography as a tool has influenced architecture and vice versa. As my research question focuses on the present trends and modern architecture, the research is to involve preparing a questionnaire and conducting interviews with eminent architects and photographers thus drawing conclusions through a qualitative approach.

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2. PHOTOGRAPHY AND ARCHITECTURE

Figure 2: Chandigarh Parliament Building. Source: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/463401

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2.1 Brief History of Architecture Photography The true architectural photograph is primarily an instrument of communication between the architect and his audience—an audience with the capacity and desire to understand and appreciate, but lacking the opportunity to experience the work in question at first hand. The camera, ideally, is the anonymous vehicle for this journey; yet the Ideal is never quite achieved, for a variety of reasons. Perhaps by examining and understanding them, some of the obstacles can be overcome.

In general, it would seem that our concern is the threefold relationship of the subject, the Intermediary medium, and the viewer. And, while we are primarily concerned with photography, it is not possible to ignore the fact that it is but an expository link between the architecture and the student. And its success can only be judged by how well it fulfils its function. (Scribd) To begin with, history of photography has a lot to do with architecture, particularly when shutter speeds were slow, it was buildings that stood still for long duration of exposures and came out as an image thus letting photographers experiment their techniques.

Now, while photographing the building the photographer often gets into the dilemma, whether to add an essence using components like composition, perspective or other techniques so as to produce a compelling and beautiful photograph or to show the scene as it is for authenticity or realism.

Figure 3Frederick Evans, Wells Cathedral: Stairway to Chapter House, 1903, http://onphotographydotorg.wordpress.com/

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The relationship between architecture and photography has been quite mutual throughout these years and the strong proof for the same can be seen with popularization and selling of modern architecture in the 1920s which was a result of an eminent and progressive group of Architectural photographers whom by the use of non-conventional perspectives, nocturne, lighting and other techniques helped create a new trend in modern architecture. Since then many art photographers have been commissioned to photograph architecture: Ezra Stoller, the American architectural photographer, was a modernist. He had the ability to capture the building according to the architect's vision and to reveal it within the given frame of view . His photographs convey a three-dimensional experience of architectural space through a two-dimensional medium, with careful attention to vantage point and lighting conditions, as well as to line, colour, form and texture. ―He had a pretty deep appreciation of the kinds of strengths of modern architecture: simplicity, proportion, and balance, ―says William S. Saunders, the author of ―Modern Architecture: Photographs by Ezra Stoller‖. (Sauer-Thompson)

Figure 5 TWA Terminal at Idlewild (now JFK) Airport, Figure 4 TWA Terminal at Idlewild (now JFK) Airport, Eero Saarinen,

Eero Saarinen, New York, NY, 1962, Gelatin Silver

New York, NY, 1962, Gelatin Silver Print, © Ezra Stoller, Courtesy

Print, © Ezra Stoller, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New

Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

York , http://www.dailyicon.net/2010/12/exhibitionphotographs-by-ezra-stoller/

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Figure 7 Frederick H. Evans, ‘York Minster – In Sure and

Figure 6 Frederick H. Evans, ‘View across the nave

Certain Hope’, 1903, Platinum print

to the transept at York Minster’, 1901, Platinum print https://artblart.wordpress.com/tag/frederick-hevans/

Frederick H. Evans (June 26, 1853 – June 24, 1943) was a noted British photographer, primarily of architectural subjects. Some of his best works are the images of English and French cathedrals. He was the first British photographer whose work Alfred Stieglitz (an American photographer and modern art promoter) published in Camera Work, a journal of photography.

Julius Shulman‘s most famous work was a blackand-white photo taken of a glass and steel frame home ( Figure 8) built by architect Pierre Koenig in the Hollywood Hills above Laurel Canyon Boulevard as the sun was setting on May 9, 1960. It was No.

Figure 8 Julius Shulman, Case Study House #22., gelatin silver print, 1960

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22 in John Entenza‘s Arts & Architecture magazine‘s Case Study housing program. This picture from outside the cantilevered house was shot through its glass walls toward a sea of sparkling city lights below. Two women seem to be chatting in the living room, and the horizontal pattern of the ceiling above them extends outside to the house‘s overhang. It was a lifestyle statement that made Shulman‘s career.

(Pearl)

Building with Light Echoing Le Corbusier‘s famous dictum that ―architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light‖, the influential architecture photographer Eric de Mare described photography as ―Building with light‖, thus underling the close and symbiotic relationship that has existed between the two disciplines ever since the invention of photography. (Elwall, 2004) ―The two fields in which the spirit of our age has achieved its most definite manifestations are photography and architecture. Did modern photography beget modern architecture, or the converse?

Without modern photography, modern architecture could never have been ‗put across.‘ In the early nineteen-twenties architectural photography was as unimaginatively true to ‗life‘ and conventional perspective as any other sort of photography. Men with the cultural equipment of beach photographers walked round buildings at a respectful distance like policemen on their beat flashing lanterns at the impeccably obvious. But the new sort of architects had their buildings taken by the new sort of photographers. A revolution in the technique of architectural photography resulted, which has revolutionized architectural criticism.‖ (Katzenstein, 2008)

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2.2 The Purpose of Photography Photography as a picture language is the newest version of the oldest form of graphic communication. Unlike the spoken or written word, it is a form of communication that can be internationally understood. This gives a photograph added meaning—and a photographer added responsibility. Since photographs can be so widely understood we should be concerned with whether what we have to say is worth saying, and whether we can say it well.

The essential purpose of photography is communication. Few people take pictures solely to please themselves. Most individuals take pictures as they want it to be seen by others.

Pictures are a photographer‘s means of expression as a writer‘s means are words. And as a writer must choose a major field of work —journalism, creative writing, biography, advertising, etc.so a photographer must choose a specific field, each field having a specific purpose.

According to Feninger, some of these purposes are:

Information Documentary photographs as well as the majority of photographs found in picture magazines, newspapers1 manuals, scientific publications and pictures used for visual education belong to this category. Their purpose is either to educate people or to enable them to make correct decisions.

Slanted Information This is the province of commercial and advertising photography and political propaganda.

The purpose of such pictures is to make the subject glamorous and more desirable. The goal is the selling of a product, a service, or an idea.

Discovery Because the camera is in many respects superior to the eye, it can be used to make discoveries in the realm of vision. This is the field of research and scientific photography,

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close-up and telephotography, ultra-wide-angle and high- speed photography, abstract photographs and photograms. The purpose of such pictures is to open new fields for exploration, to widen man‘s visual and intellectual horizons, and to enrich his life.

Recording Photography provides the simplest and cheapest means for preserving facts in picture form.

Catalogue pictures, reproductions of works of art, micro- filming of documents and books, identification pictures, and certain kinds of documentary photographs, fall into this category.

Used for recording purposes, photography preserves knowledge and facts in easily accessible form suitable for widest dissemination and utilization.

Entertainment Photography provides an endless source of entertainment and pleasure: motion pictures, amateur photographs, travel pictures, fine picture books and photographic annuals, pin-up photographs, photographic feature stories in picture magazines, etc.

Self-expression An increasing number of talented and creative people find in photography a relatively inexpensive means self- expression. Almost any subject can be photographed in an unlimited number of different ways, and more and more photographers seek new and more expressive forms of photographic rendition through which to share with others their own visions of the world, their feelings, ideas, and thoughts.

(Feininger, The Complete Photographer, 1971)

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2.3 Nature of Photography Photography is a unique form of visual experience and through the years has seen various developments that have added to its authenticity in creating the visual experience.

Photography is governed by its own characteristics that define its scope and limitations, what it can and cannot do. Some of them are discussed below:

Authenticity Authenticity is the main characteristic of this language. Other visual media like drawings or paintings are mostly inaccurate or incomplete; those created from imagination might not be totally true. But every photograph expresses a sense of truth which other graphic media fail to deliver. As said by Feninger ‗It is this quality that makes a photograph ―more convincing than a thousand words‖ and gives it a power of conviction that is not found in any other form of communication.‘ No matter neither how imaginatively the subject is treated nor how subjectively it is looked at, the observer is conscious that he is looking a glimpse of reality.

No matter how strange the interpretation of the subject might appear, he is aware that the lens cannot invent something that wasn‘t there. Even the most simulated form of perspective distortion caused to the subject due to the use of a particular lens or method, is a rendition of reality.

Speed of Recording The amount of time required to make the right exposure that freezes the subject or records an event as a photograph is negligible compared to other media of art. It only takes a few seconds to capture an image and this speed of recording is a tremendous advantage that photography has over other media of communication. By the time a draftsman or an artist take in sketching or painting the subject, the photographer can take dozens of different photographs and choose the most significant amongst them. In this aspect a photographer can showcase an event with the use of a sequence of photographs.

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Figure 9: Cloud Gate, Chicago

This aspect has its drawbacks particularly with the incoming of digital means as it can result in producing hasty, thoughtless pictures based on the idea that in a large number of pictures, according to the laws of chance, a certain number will be good. This common misconception can result in the abuse of this art form.

Precision As a photograph is produced through mechanical means, it is correct in every detail. The availability of such precise rendition is one of the most valuable characteristics of photography as a photograph can show us things that cannot be seen with the naked eye. In the current scenario, with experimenting and technological advancements, many postprocessing techniques and different equipment help create images that can communicate more effectively. Here this clarity is rejected by certain photographers as the images seem ‗Unnatural‘ or surreal whereas others deliberately process raw images to create an artistic effect. This depends on the point of view and the need as at certain moments a raw image cannot convey the required information and it needs processing. At the same moment the

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processing of the image must not be overdone as it might lead to miscommunication and misleading of information. (Feininger, The Complete Photographer, 1971)

Figure 10: The Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, California was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1957–62. This photo of the main entrance of the administration building was part of a 2009 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum..

Photograph by Ezra Stoller © Esto

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2.4 Advent of Digital means Many people consider photography as an art because it allows for an expression of emotion.

They believe that digital photography is a continuation of the art of drawing or painting.

Digital photography is just like painting in the sense that although it does take accurate pictures of reality, it also allows for some modification through the various digital tools available today. One of the strongest arguments for the artistic nature of electronic photography is the fact that the picture is rarely really what is seen with the naked eye.

Through the camera and computer, a person can alter the image in order to present what he or she wants to show.

The true nature of digital photography will always remain to be a paradox. This means that though it can be considered as an art, it can also be considered as a science. When is the paradox of the nature of digital photography solved? Well, it is solved when a person takes a digital photograph.

The true nature of digital photos lies in the hands of the person who takes the pictures. The way a person treats the process defines the nature of digital photography for him or her. It is not absolutely art nor is it absolutely science. The true nature of digital photography is a paradox.

Ease of use and faster means of communication are also characteristics of a digital photograph. The digital means has also impacted the construction process of buildings; presently, communication between the site and the architectural offices during the construction stages has been eased due to cheap availability of this technology. This has also cut down the time taken for construction as the architect gets to work more effectively in his office instead of travelling to the site often.

Even without the editing many people still believe that digital photography is art because of the fact that it does take an artist's eye to find a great subject of digital photography. The

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Figure 11: An example of a rendering of an HDRI tone-mapped image in a New York City night time cityscape.

nature of electronic photography as an art has something to do with the fact that an artist is able to express emotions and statements through visual subjects. ―The modern architect imitates the photographer; he builds with lights and shadows, with black and white.‖ (Elwall, 2004) Another argument regarding the scientific nature of digital photo taking is the fact that the image manipulating that people do and adjustments that photographers make are based on a series of steps that can be narrowed down scientifically. People who argue for the scientific nature of digital photos may reason that the same series of steps can be taken in order to achieve the same results. There is a certain quality of constancy about this type of photography that renders it a science.

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2.5 Photographs as Icons Our first, sometimes only, impression of a building is often formed by a photograph, and the skilled photographer can help us to see even the most seemingly familiar structures with a fresh eye.

Architecture as taught and discussed by other architects relies on the recognition of a mass of famous pictures. Indeed, sometimes these can seem more iconically famous and even more satisfying ‗architectural‘ than some of the buildings themselves. The basic purpose of most photographs is to represent and reproduce objects realistically. However, it often becomes much more than a mere document. ―Often, a dramatic photograph can have such a strong impact that it doesn‘t remain a simple reproduction of architecture but in fact an icon and a symbol itself. It is curious to see that buildings documentation elevates its status from merely architecture to a higher art.‖ (Rattenbury, 2002) Louis Kahn designed the Salk Center in La Jolla, as an expressive composition that is spatially and symbolically incomplete, with its two rhythmic buildings which define a powerful axis that is open at each end. Most of us immediately visualise the building from the picture at the bottom compared to the one at the top. This extraordinary complex of the Salk Institute is more beautifully and humbly sited and executed than can be conveyed in photographs. ―Buildings are places we live, work and carry on with our lives. They are inhabited by the mundane and for this reason we are not prone to seeing architecture as an art unless instructed to do so- which is what a photographer often does. While this is not to say that it remains to the photographer to bestow legitimacy upon architecture it does point out the curious ease with which we will accept the aesthetic value of the representation more easily than the original.‖ (Busch, 1993)

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Figure 12: Salk Institute by Louis I Khan, http://pingu.salk.edu/~hu

Figure 13: Salk Institute by Louis I Khan, http://4.bp.blogspot.com/nter/photos/miscellaneous

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3. THE CAMERA

Figure 14: Kodak No. 2 Brownie box camera, circa 1910(Top), 19th century studio camera ( Bottom) Source: Wikipedia, Janez Novak, Ljubljana, Slovenija

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Camera is a phenomenal product that changed the life styles of nearly all people. At the same time, it has undergone radical changes over a few centuries. The concept of camera evolved from a device called camera obscura. The earliest record of such a device was made by an Arab scientist who described this device in his book on optics in 1021 A.D. It uses a pinhole or lens to project an image of the scene onto a viewing surface. Couple century‘s later; Leonardo da Vinci wrote the first detailed design of camera obscura in his Atalantic Codex. In 1825, Niepce took what is known to be the world first permanent photograph by making a reproduction of a Dutch painting. Although there were others who took photos before this, none of them were permanent as they all faded quickly. According to his own handwritten record, it took eight hours for Niepce to take his picture. Early cameras, known as Daguerrotype cameras weighed 120 pounds and a complete kit required a horsedrawn wagon to move it around. (Nagera, 1996)

Figure 15: Niepce’s earliest surviving photograph of a scene from nature, circa 1826, "View from the Window at Le Gras," Saint-Loup-de-Varennes (France); Source: Rebecca A. Moss, Coordinator of Visual Resources and Digital Content Library, via email.

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Figure 16: "Boulevard du Temple", taken by Louis Daguerre in late 1838 or early 1839; It is an image of a busy street, but because exposure time was over ten minutes, the city traffic was moving too much to appear. The exceptions are the two people in the bottom left corner, one who stood still getting his boots polished by the other long enough to show up in the picture.

Wikipedia/ Scanned from The Photography Book, Phaidon Press, London, 1997

3.1 A Brief History of the Camera After hearing about Niepce's work, French painter Louis Jacques MandĂŠ Daguerre (17991851) entered the field and finally both became partners. After that, the history of photography centers in commercial applications and its social implications. Both Daguerre in France and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) in England made little fortunes with the invention.

Practically anything we can imagine in photography has been done before, including camera-less photography, which was used by Talbot. Even today, photography students

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follow his procedure by placing objects directly on sensitive paper and turning on the line for a brief time: translucent objects such as onion layers produce beautiful impressions.

Buildings were an ideal subject for the photographic processes introduced by J.L.M. Daguerre and William Talbot in 1839, since buildings were amenable to the very long exposure times required.

Collodion dry plates had been available since 1855, thanks to the work of Desire van Monckhoven, but it was not until the invention of the gelatin dry plate in 1871 by Richard Leach Maddox that they rivaled wet plates in speed and quality. Also, for the first time, cameras could be made small enough to be hand-held, or even concealed. There was a proliferation of various designs, from single- and twin-lens reflexes to large and bulky field cameras, handheld cameras, and even cameras disguised as pocket watches, hats, or other objects.

Figure 17: A portable photography studio in 19th century Ireland. The wet collodion process sometimes gave rise to portable darkrooms, as photographic images needed to be developed while the plate was still wet.

See: Denison, John. Micklethwaite's Muskoka, p. 8. (Erin, Ontario: The Boston Mills Press, 1993

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The shortened exposure times that made candid photography possible also necessitated another innovation, the mechanical shutter. The very first shutters were separate accessories, though built-in shutters were common by the turn of the century.

After the invention of film-based camera, 35mm camera and Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera were invented in 1913 and 1928, respectively. One of the major innovations in SLR camera was the eye level viewfinder that was first introduced in 1947. Prior to this, the SLR cameras had a waist level focusing screens. Polaroid then introduced the instant cameras in 1948. It was an instant hit and remains as one of the top bestselling cameras of all time. By the 1960s, low-cost electronic components made it possible to build cameras with light meters and automatic exposure systems.

(Youngjin Yoo, 2002) Looking at the preliminary cameras, mostly the camera was fixed on tripods due to their bulky character and this limited the photographer to portray certain perspectives of the building. The way a building or space was perceived through the media was limited and at times this restricted the architect to highlight the idea of his building. These concerns were later refurbished when the cameras were compacted with the 35mm film roll and it made the whole process more flexible.

Figure 18: Ur-Leica ("original Leica"), from 1914; Source: Leica Microsystems

Figure 19: The film is 35 mm (1.4 in) wide. Each image is 36Ă—24 mm in the most common "full-frame" format (sometimes called "double-frame" for its relationship to the "single frame" 35 mm movie format).; Source: Wikipedia

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3.2 A Tool to Communicate ―Photography is a medium, it‘s like a typewriter. Photography as an art doesn‘t interest me an awful lot‖- Ezra Stoller Communication is described as a one way process originating with a sender through a medium to a receiver. The important aspect of the three parts is the medium which bridges the sender and the receiver as the sender does not know who the end receiver will be. As the world grows smaller and the population gets larger it becomes even more essential that people understand each other to avoid hostility. It is consequentially important to have a common medium of communication between people all over the world. A person‘s primary and first interaction with his surroundings is through visual contact. Communication through a visual medium becomes ideal as not only does it have a greater impact but is also discernible and understood by all. Photography being a universal and the simplest form of visual media has been the most appreciated medium of communication.

(Curl) As far as architectural representation is considered, the greatest advantage of photographic images as communication is that they are not technical or abstract compared to architectural drawings and can educate the lay-man a lot more about architecture. Media, publicity and consumerism define architectures relationship with photography. With the advent of media in every sphere of life, images have become the primary means of communication and international architecture finds place in the drawing rooms and homes of a common man.

Today photography is not only about crystallizing memories or events; it is a profession; it‘s fun; it is used for exchanging ideas.

Today, with the advent of digital medium we have many ways to under-take the same activity - be it a digital camera, video camera, mobile camera or web camera, one has many options.

With the expansion of the web, a new dimension has been added to digital photography. Not

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only are photographs used by the media, to convey news, information; or by Hollywood / Bollywood to portray one‘s personality; they are also used in astronomy and medical diagnosis.

But it has its negatives too - photographs can be used for many unwanted purposes, like swaying opinions, etc. Lovers of photography feel that with the advent of digital technology, the opportunity to derive satisfaction by producing a piece of art has been denied to the photographer and it has even impacted ethics in photography. But, on the other hand, it has given rise to a new breed of photographers who have taken this up as a hobby.

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3.3 Evolution of Digital Camera A digital camera records still images in a digital format. Unlike analog cameras that record light onto photographic film, digital cameras use a solid state, light-sensitive, silicon chips.

The chip‘s electrical charges are converted into discrete numbers for storage on a flash memory card or optical disc.

The origin of the digital camera can be traced back to the US space program. NASA and the US intelligence agencies that used space satellite images to gather intelligence needed an

Figure 20: A Nikon D90 DSLR Camera; www.videography.com

efficient way to take images in the space and transmit them back to the earth. A major step towards digital photography was the invention of the charge-coupled device (CCD) by Willard Boyle and George Smith at Bell Labs in 1969. The CCD is a light-sensitive integrated

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circuit that stores information, represented by discrete packets of electric charge. Soon after its invention, the CCD was established as a versatile and robust optical detector for cameras.

Over time, digital camera has been integrated with other technologies. First, cameras have become an integral part of mobile phones. These phones are generally referred to as camera phones. The first camera phone, J-SH04, was manufactured by Sharp in 2000 for JPhone, a Japanese mobile operator.

Figure 21: An iphone with front and rear facing cameras, Source: Apple

The major impact with the invention of the CCD sensors is that the photographer had more resources to experiment with and it came with more opportunities to highlight the various aspects of a building. The cameras of the present days have been compacted to such an extent that cannot be thought of. The camera of an iphone can create wonderful images and the user doesn‘t need much skill to create such an image.

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3.4 New Dimensions of Digital Innovation The analysis of the evolution of digital camera shows an unbounded nature of digital innovation. At the beginning, the core idea of digital camera was a simple technical replacement of chemical-based photographic film with a light-sensitive solid-state silicon chip. During the initial wave of digital camera evolution, there was no fundamental change in the function and the meaning of the camera. However, over time, continuing digitalization of different components and the integration with other digital technologies such as mobile phone, network technology, GPS and the internet, transformed digital camera and its usages in a way that was not originally intended by the early inventors.

For example, new digital cameras come now with on-board YouTube and Flickr applications so that pictures and video clips can be directly uploaded without connecting to a PC. This in turn demand development of more robust operating systems underlying the functions of digital cameras to control simultaneously multiple software and hardware resources required by these new services.

As Mr. Asim Waqif says ―In the present times, if you look at story telling or something like that most of it has become photographs, when a person goes on a vacation, immediately facebook has an album of that vacation and shows what that person has done. In that sense a photograph becomes a very integral part of certain typical experiences like holidays or weddings, birth, birthdays and so on and the event starts getting manipulated by the needs of photography. The whole thing has come before the camera where everybody comes, stands for a while and then walks off. So in this aspect, the visual of what good buildings are or what good houses are, that is a thing that is propagated partly through media and partly through people through their own picture. It is also trying to create an idea of visually what the culture is trying to be by photographs only.‖

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Figure 22: A Facebook page

Figure 23: A Photography Blog

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3.5 Photography as a Language

Figure 24: Rabindra Bhavan Panels , Source: Mr. Ram Rahman, Refer Appendix B for the panels.

These are photo panels made by Mr. Ram Rahman himself for an exhibition at the India International Centre to bring out the dangers of recklessly renovating, upgrading, and even selectively destroying Delhi‘s modern architectural heritage. Here one sees a photographer using photography as a visual language to fight for a cause where he believes in preserving Delhi‘s post-independence modern architecture. ―We don‘t value our heritage. That‘s the point I will try to make with my pictures. It‘s like the destruction of the new.‖- Mr. Ram Rahman What Rahman calls destruction, however, others see as restoration. Juxtaposed with his father‘s black and white photographs are Ram Rahman‘s own shots which document how these buildings have changed over time.

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3.6 Photography in Media

Figure 25: Image via ARCHIZINES; www.architizer.com

―It‘s interesting to note that there is a fashion for writing semiological analysis of architecture.

I find this very intriguing, not because semiology is enjoying a vogue in intellectual circles, but more because what is being in this instance analysed is not the buildings themselves but published photographs of the works. The application of semiotics in the architectural arena is perhaps open to question, but the apparent acceptance of the photograph as not being a photograph of the building but the building itself is, I feel, perhaps worth a brief comment‖ (Greene, 2002)

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With such a broad scope of media available for an architect to publish his works one can wonder if contemporary architects aim all their activities toward getting to the magazine cover and not worrying whether the building will last beyond the photographers shooting session.

Firstly, with photography one can easily fool a viewer as a space can be manipulated and interpreted through photography by various tricks like use of a different lens, artificial lighting.

Also now considering the need of documentation, at most places photography has been a very successful tool to bring out ideas of a particular building but at the same time at many places, it‘s only the photographs that still live.

For instance as Mr. Asim Waqif says, ―The building by Anagram Architects in Arjun Nagar, New Delhi for South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC) it was awesome in its photographs but I don‘t think that building is going to survive much longer. I took the photographs of that building. Quite a few of them who have seen the photographs of that building are in Delhi and that building is also in Delhi, and still they have not been to that building.‖

Figure 26: South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC),by Anagram Architects, photographed by Mr. Asim Waqif. Source: www.anagramarchitects.com

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Also as Ar. Sanjay Bharadwaj argures, for any serious architect, putting up his building in a well-recognised media is extremely long and one has to be tenacious to put up even a simple building. Again, any serious publication will not just take one‘s images and publish them; they will send somebody to review it on site to verify the images. To this extent the feels that contemporary architects are not aiming to the magazine covers and the primary focus still remains to still put up a good building.

The other thing is that photography has itself become ubiquitous now; everybody takes photographs, earlier only a few people did photographs and this form of representational media has become more prevalent with most individuals in the present. Also more people get to see these photographs through the present media wherein the photograph does not need to be printed but seen through digital media.

When any information is brought out in through the media, there are certain aspects taken care of, like, high quality of photographs and the quality of printing, the expert placing of the image by the skilled graphic designers and the careful selection of images to support the claims of the accompanying text. Also what one sees these days is an architecture that is related to photographs of architecture. ―With reference to this, the history of modern art has been described as a history of photographs of modern art; and perhaps the history of modern architecture can also be viewed in this kind of way.

A picture post card of the Taj Mahal is as much a picture of the idea of the Taj Mahal as it is of an actual object. The fact of the post card denotes that the Taj Mahal is an important idea more reliably than it denotes that such an object exists in the form shown.‖ (Greene, 2002)

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4. CONCLUSIONS

Figure 27: MAXXI Museum in Rome by Zaha Hadid Architects; Photograph by Iwan Baan, www.archtracker.com

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The various ideas in modern architecture are brought out to spotlight by the media in vast proportions that a person doesn‘t need to visit any particular place in any part of the world to learn about the architecture of that place. All of his/ her requirements are a click away, through online blogs, e-magazines and web albums that provide all the necessary information of any particular building through photographs, conceptual sketches, 3D‘s and descriptions. The key connect in this aspect is photography as it gives a glimpse of the building to the reader and due to its authenticity it removes all abstract doubts of the building.

When a reader looks into the photograph he has to be assured the authenticity of the photograph. Architecture is more of an experiential medium, the photograph can only provide a glimpse of the building and it captures a momentary mood of the space. As a photographer one has to take the responsibility to highlight the essential components of the design within the frame of the camera after discussion with the architect. Thus the architect has to be able to provide a physical experience to the photographer so as to facilitate him to capture the precise angles of the building that highlights the various design aspects involved.

A photograph is a tool that interprets an architectural space at a particular moment of time. To best understand a space through photography, the building has to be studied across a given time and documenting the building through photographs at different points of time.

The angles that explain the building the best have to be chosen with utmost care as it is this frame that the whole world is about to see through the various media available.

The idea of photography has always been the same; the only major advancements are in the field of technology which has made photography more flexible. The huge bulky cameras have been compacted and the digital censors and storage have given new ways for experimentation of this medium and made it more compliant. Moreover, various postprocessing methods have provided different ways to illustrate the same idea, for instance, HDR imaging enabled photographers to bring out the various details that could otherwise not be observed in a normal photograph due to excessive lighting or lack of lighting.

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At times, the photographer has the freedom to manipulate the image according to the need. This manipulation has to be done with utmost care due to the above discussed reasons. Mr. Ram Rahman was able to add the landscape on photoshop on the photographs as they were still not completed in the case of the Sikh Cultural Centre by Ar. Moshe Safdie and the architect needed them for an exhibition of his works. Earlier when he worked on the Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur when he went for the photoshoot he was shocked as the building was not finished and not ready to be photographed. So he shot the required angle on polaroids and asked the workers to complete the building at these angles so that he would return after two weeks for the shoot. In both these aspects he never intended to mislead the user but as he was to finish the shoot on time he had to manipulate the images.

At such instances on might wonder ―Is the photograph still authentic?‖ When one looks at the media, it is not an easy task for the architect to get himself published by a well reputed publisher. As said by Ar. Rajeev Agarwal, the architect would have to provide proof of authenticity of the photographs and any serious publication will not just publish any given work without proper verification.

Photography has always been the greatest tool to document architecture. Buildings may get depleted and damaged in course of time but a photograph might live long. At times all of what remains of a building are the photographs. Through the advent of present technology one is even able to create 360o panoramas which try to bring out the feel of a space but still it doesn‘t match the reality of the spatial experience as it would lack the various dynamic facets prevalent in a space that makes it unique. Photography is a powerful tool to document and to provide a glimpse of the architecture documented. As documenting architecture is vital and photography is of utmost necessity in the process, photography becomes indispensible. ―A picture is worth a thousand words‖

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Questionnaire To the Architect: 1. How photography according to you is an effective mode of graphic communication/ documentation for your work? Why? 2. How do you work with the photographer?

3. Do you believe that photography has an expression of truth in revealing the story?

4. Would you like it if the photographer attempts to seek new and more expressive forms of photographic rendition through which to share with others their own visions of the world, their feelings, ideas, and thoughts?

5. Your learning‘s/ opinion from architectural magazines/ blogs, instances where in you‘ve felt something has been overdone?

6. Do you think contemporary architects aim all their activities toward getting to the magazine cover and not worrying whether the building will last beyond the photographers shooting session?

To the Photographer: 1. What are your reasons/ theory for shooting architecture?

2. How do you approach a building through photography?

3. How do you feel has the impact of digital means / the current trend revolutionized this field?

4. Would you like to seek new and more expressive forms of photographic rendition through which to share with others your own visions of the world, your feelings, ideas, and thoughts?

5. Your learning‘s/ opinion from architectural/ photography magazines, instances where in you‘ve felt something has been overdone?

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Appendix A

Interview 1 Architect Sanjay Bharadwaj Date: 21st October 2011 Profile: Graduated from the School of Planning and Architecture, Sanjay has been a Director at Morphogenesis since 2002. Sanjay has had over 15 years of extensive experience in master planning, design and execution of a diverse range of commercial, residential, office and institutional projects. His forte is delivering cutting--‐edge Master Planning, Urban Design, Mixed Use developments and Housing projects which are both environmentally and financially sustainable. Some of the key award--‐winning projects have been The MGF Metropolitan Mall, Gurgaon (2003), The Uttorayon Township, Siliguri (2006), Central mall, Chandigarh (2008). More recent projects include the Corporate Office for India Glycols, Noida (2009), and Marble Arch Housing, Chandigarh (2010).

(Morphogenesis) How photography according to you is an effective mode of graphic communication/ documentation for your work? Why? Photography is a very important means of documenting the work but, it‘s not the only way, of course we also use photography to document before and during construction and design process to get the right idea to what extent of design the site requires. We also use photography a number of times for communication and instruction, for example, if I go to site for site visits, I go around taking pictures so as to discuss the corrections later with the engineers or project managers or contractors. It is similar to the early ways of going to the

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site every time and referring to the working drawings and to the right column and grid, we mark them on photographs and it helps us by easing the process. It‘s not just documenting the finished product we are using it substantially a lot in the whole working process.

How do you work with the photographer?

The architect sits with the photographer and explains to him what is important about the building, because a number of times when a photographer goes to the site and looks at the building he might miss out a lot of things that we as architects want documented. So we explain to the photographer our requirements and we do one trip with the photographer to the building and show him the important aspects. All this has nothing to do with the frames or composition or lighting which is important to the photographer and it‘s only from the architectural point of view. It could be the spatial character, detail or the construction technique. Later the photographer figures out how and when to come for the shoot, sometime it takes 2 days or 2 months and it still doesn‘t get over just because he‘s not able to get the right lighting and so on. Sometimes the best of the photographers come and show you the pictures and they might have to be reviewed and some of them just don‘t work.

When we go on our visits, we carry our cameras and click pictures regularly and out of that we will take out a few of them, though they might be incorrect at that moment, but later when the building is finished this is the frame that we are looking for.

The easiest time to shoot a building is after they are finished and before they are occupied; because once it is occupied it becomes difficult to fix timings with the occupants for a shoot.

Still at times the interiors can be shot at times, but in case of outdoors, we might have to wait for the landscape to be completed and the grass to grow. So what we do is, we have a shoot as soon as the building is completed and another one after a year or 18 months, when there is some habitation in the building and no longer that the building is raw and unfinished just to bring out how the space is being used.

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Some photographers do understand the building really well get their perspective corrections right, lighting and compositions right. Sometimes the photograph does wonders, a photograph is a really funny tool it has the ability to make anything look good, you can click a picture and through the present facilities of computers it has become really efficient to modulate and make it look good. But the main idea is to bring out the quality of the space and not all photographers can get it right.

Do you believe that photography has an expression of truth in revealing the story?

It depends on the nature of the photograph. Architecture, fortunately or unfortunately, I don‘t know is an extremely visual medium and you cannot disregard the visual aspect of it. This image component of architecture is only 10% and architecture is not all about the image.

When you portray an image there is always a certain focus on the object that you are trying to bring out and it is extremely important. For instance when you look at an housing block and even though there is nothing much apt to bring out, you might try to make it look attractive or depending on your clients you would try to add those qualities to it to able to sell it. Once such a thing is done, how much close the original building is to the image is something that is questioned a lot of times. A photograph must be more of a proof of what has been done and to that extent it is extremely truthful.

Would you like it if the photographer attempts to seek new and more expressive forms of photographic rendition through which to share with others their own visions of the world, their feelings, ideas, and thoughts?

Of course, all the time, the photographers do it all the time and its great fun to look at your work in a different way. It‘s quite interesting to see the way a photographer looks at your building, wherein they put in a lot of their own ideas and make it look really interesting. At times it also ends up being flattering as we find it unnecessary for documenting.

Your learning‘s/ opinion from architectural magazines/ blogs, instances where in you‘ve felt something has been overdone?

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When one goes through others work, those that are published sometime you do get a lot of ideas. To tell you frankly I document published work that I like for future references and for ideas and that‘s the way most architects work wherein you don‘t create everything from the photograph. It‘s an extremely powerful visual medium where you get to show a picture and not to tell and it shows you something that is achievable and possible from an architect‘s point of view.

Do you think contemporary architects aim all their activities toward getting to the magazine cover and not worrying whether the building will last beyond the photographers shooting session?

No. Not at all. For any architect, any serious architect, putting up a building is an extremely long and you have to be tenacious to put up even a simple building. A good and a successful photograph is actually an outcome of good building which has been put up and not the other way around. I don‘t think any building can last beyond one or two such instances. To this extent I feel that contemporary architects are not aiming to the magazine covers and the primary focus still remains to still put up a good building. Also any serious publication will not just take your images and publish them; they will send somebody to review it on site to verify the images.

Photographs have a lot of recalling value sometimes much more than buildings have where that instance of reality that has been frozen and is never going to change.

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Interview 2 Mr. Ram Rahman Date: 9th November 2011 A veteran photojournalist, artist, curator, designer and activist Ram Rahman, initially studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Later, Rahman completed a degree in Graphic Design from Yale University‘s School of Art in 1979. Born in 1955, Rahman has shown his photographs in individual and group shows in India and around the world.

Rahman is one of the founding members of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) in New Delhi, a leader in the resistance to communal and sectarian forces in India through its public cultural action. The artist lives and works in New Delhi.

(Saffronart, 2008) What are your reasons/ theory for shooting architecture?

As my father was an architect himself I had an architectural background and this helped me create an eye in this field. All my initial photographs were shot on film. At the time I was shooting it was primarily colour, initially when madan was shooting it was primarily black and white as colour printing was very expensive in India and our economy did not support it. By the 80‘s we began to have an economy which can support colour and the demand for work became colour, so initially I did both and later did only colour.

How do you approach a building through photography?

As I had a background in architecture I would ask the architect to send me the plans and observe it along with the other vital information of the site before even going there. One of the first things I would check is orientation, so I would know where the light came from even before I went to the site as that was something I was conscious of. At what time of the day which part of the building would be lit and also to analyze when to click which part of the

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building. This saves me time and I knew I had to know it. So when I go to the building I position myself and sculpt the building over there first and very often I would speak to the architect before they would take me to the building and tell me what is interesting from their point of view. So later I do a combination of both our interests and photograph the building.

How do you feel has the impact of digital means / the current trend revolutionized this field?

Yes, when I shot Moshe Safdie‘s, the Sikh Heritage Center it was at the time when it was still under construction, but he needed pictures for an international exhibition of his work so the landscape in the pictures he used had to be photoshoped, because it wasn‘t finished. So now you can do these things as technologically earlier it was very difficult to do. When I shot the Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur, it was done in the days of the film and was an expensive shoot for the architectural record magazine and they had commissioned me and I was paid a professional fee and travel expenses etc., and when I went there, I was shocked as the building was not finished and not ready to be photographed. There was streaks of whitewash running down the red sandstone, the lawn had not been laid and lamps have not been fixed and wiring was exposed no water in the pools and I refused to click even a single picture for this publication. So as a solution I took polaroid shots and I fixed 8 angles I am going to be shooting and on the polaroid‘s I marked fix this lamp, change this wall, put grass here, only so much which you can see in the shot, I don‘t care about the rest of the frame; please set these frames for me and I will come back about two weeks later. Sometimes things like this had to be done then, but in the present days through tools like photoshop these processes have become more efficient. A similar thing was done during my shoot in the Rashtrapathi Bhavan.

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Would you like to seek new and more expressive forms of photographic rendition through which to share with others your own visions of the world, your feelings, ideas, and thoughts?

Yes. A photographer basically develops an eye, and through time by working we understand our medium better, you know what the camera can do and when you have an understanding of what to show you approach the building with that in mind.

Your learning‘s/ opinion from architectural/ photography magazines, instances where in you‘ve felt something has been overdone?

Today‘s media has indeed helped to reach more people and to a large extent has made the whole process easy. Also most of my work is put up on the internet through blogs which have made it more efficient for me to put forward my views. As discussed before it depends on the need of photograph, todays tools help to add things into photographs and modulate them.

When providing information is the need, care has to be taken that this medium is not misused.

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Interview 3 Mr. Asim Waqif Date: 5/1/2012 Delhi-based Asim Waqif studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, where he currently teaches as Visiting Faculty. After initially working as an art-director for film and television he later started making independent video and documentaries before moving into a dedicated art-practice.

His recent projects have attempted a crossover between architecture, art and design, with a strong contextual reference to contemporary urban-design and the politics of occupying/intervening/using public spaces. Some of his projects have developed within abandoned and derelict buildings in the city that act like hidden activity-spaces for marginalized people.

Concerns of ecology and anthropology often weave through his work and he has done extensive research on vernacular systems of ecological management, especially with respect to water, waste and architecture. His artworks often employ manual processes that are deliberately pain-staking and laborious while the products themselves are often temporary and sometimes even designed to decay. He has worked in sculpture, site-specific public installation, video, photography, and more recently with large-scale interactive installations that combine traditional and new media technologies.

(Artist biography) What are your reasons/ theory for shooting architecture?

With photography it is very easy using a visual tool to fool a viewer. If a person is not actually there, through photography you can completely change the way a space appears, through many tricks like the use of different kind of lenses, different lighting, and artificial lighting. For

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taking pro photographs of architectural spaces, photographers mostly carry their own lighting. The other thing is that, photography itself is very ubiquitous now; everybody takes photographs, earlier only a few people did photographs or a few people did paintings so representational things, you know, not experiential things was done by certain people earlier right now anyone takes out a phone to click a picture. So the perception and use of photography has become completely different. So I would say that specialised photography has gone down in many ways or may be not by much, it‘s just not visible as there is so much more average and bad photography that has overpowered. But good photographers can totally change the way a space can be represented.

How do you approach a building through photography? Would you like to seek new and more expressive forms of photographic rendition through which to share with others your own visions of the world, your feelings, ideas, and thoughts?

It depends on the building. A lot of it has to do with the lighting, going at the right time of the day; either you go early in the morning or create that situation in the evening.

Photography is a moment in time, but a space changes and continues through time.

When the photographer goes for a shoot the architect talks about what he wants the building to look like and during this post construction time the photographer has create images that showcase the building in the best way. When you design the building in a certain way with a certain idea of what that is to be experienced, you try and communicate that to the photographer and the photographer should ideally look into those aspects. It depends, sometimes stylization works also, but on the whole when you have employed that photographer to do the work he has to try and understand what he‘s trying to do. But a lot of photographs I‘ve taken are just of those buildings that are there. In commercial photography what people expect is that everything has to be in focus. Sometimes there can be a little depth of field but mostly it doesn‘t, if you need that wide a depth of field you need to shoot at certain f-stops and you don‘t want the shutter speed to go beyond a certain value as more

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noise starts coming up, but what we are looking at are crystal clear photographs, so as a photographer shooting a building would be very different compared to a photographer at another perspective. There are people who can do both roles. For example, Mr. Andre Fanthome , he takes a lot of photographs, but when he is hired by an architect he performs in a certain way.

How do you feel has the impact of digital means / the current trend revolutionized this field?

Your learning‘s/ opinion from architectural/ photography magazines, instances where in you‘ve felt something has been overdone?

Most buildings are like that. If you look at any builder advertisement also, not only photographs but 3d‘s are also being used. But there are certain things that photographs cannot communicate; basically it‘s a 2-dimensional media so whatever space is being shown it‘s shown on a 2-d screen. For example when we are going through a constricted space at least head on, along the axis you can create some sort of a photograph, but when something is right next to your face in that space, it becomes difficult to bring out that sort of an enclosed idea. The experience of a space also has to do with the movement of a person within that space. It might be possible to create a virtual world but still it is much far away from the real experience. That is why I feel, photography is an amazing cheating game.

There are instances where in building have been built and survived for a year or two, but later they survived more as photographs.

The building by Anagram Architects in Arjun Nagar, New Delhi for South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC) it was awesome in its photographs but I don‘t think that building is going to survive much longer. I took the photographs of that building. Quite a few of them who have seen the photographs of that building are in Delhi and that building is also in Delhi, and still they have not been to that building.

In the present times, if you look at story telling or something like that most of it has become photographs, when a person goes on a vacation, immediately facebook has an album of that

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vacation and shows what that person has done. In that sense a photograph becomes a very integral part of certain typical experiences like holidays or shaadis, birth, birthdays and so on and the event starts getting manipulated by the needs of photography. The whole thing has come before the camera where everybody comes, stands for a while and then walks off. So in this aspect, the visual of what good buildings are or what good houses are, that is a thing that is propagated partly through media and partly through people through their own picture.

It is also trying to create an idea of visually what the culture is trying to be by photographs only. Earlier it was not like that, there was not much representational medium available to such a large group. Lots of people can look at the same image and you don‘t even have to print it anymore and the experience of the building can change quite a lot.

When you shoot a photograph with a 24mm or a 15mm lens with the wide angle, the photographs are distorted and sometimes used to bring out the quality of space and only after the invention of these lenses did people start making paintings like that. Also in case of photoshop, when you change the curves drastically, suddenly the colours get really off these were also seen in paintings.

Do you believe that photography has an expression of truth in revealing the story?

It doesn‘t have any truth, it has an interpretation; truth is also very strange, there is no actual way of looking at things in life. Photography is already an interpretation by the photographer or the architect. You can either enhance it or kill it. You can show a building grander than it can be, but you cannot show how exactly grand it is. For documenting purposes, photography has been a powerful tool and played an important role as one can refer to a photograph at any point of time. You can just flick through it and get necessary information with great ease.

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Interview 4 Ar. Rajeev Agarwal Date: 9/1/2012 Rajeev Agarwal, Architect is a Dynamic and progressive architectural and interior design firm. Rajeev Agarwal is a graduate from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi and is registered with the Council of Architects, Fellow of the IIA. The firm has worked on diverse projects ranging from Institutional, Commercial, Residential and Tourism related projects to low cost appropriate architecture, studies of settlements, villages and other traditional architecture.

The design philosophy stresses on a detailed pre-design study of the site including the climatic conditions, socio-cultural aspects, available local skills and crafts and an assessment of the client‘s requirements. The design evolves out of the study to result in appropriate solution.

(Architect biography) How photography according to you is an effective mode of graphic communication/ documentation for your work? Why? I think they are two sides of a coin; definitely photography is a great tool for documenting architecture. However the elements of light and shade that a photograph captures is a momentary mood, it is a singular moment which often changes. When there is a photographer shooting a building he takes great pain to capture the space at a certain hour whether the sun is down or not at a certain angle and also removing certain obstacles. It is a much personalised expression of the building. Architecture is by and large is an experiential medium, and when you experience it there is a lot of dynamic which are at play which make you experience architecture. When you try and use photography as a tool to experience that

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one of the dangers is that it starts expressing the essence of architecture through a momentary 2D medium which means that the architecture has been looked at a certain moment in time, with a certain light and sanitation, I‘m not saying it‘s wrong or right I‘m just saying to you what happens. Sometimes with the most fantastic picture the architecture is not equal to that and vice versa. Photography might be a great tool to express architecture, but it is limited in its usage, it cannot be pan-architecture. And also different types of architecture need different media to be expressed, for example if you consider a street, maybe a sketch or a film might be better as compared to photography as they are more messier things and come in our everyday life.

But when you want to document architecture, there is no better tool than photography as you can show almost all detail you need through photographs.

How do you work with the photographer? Would you like it if the photographer attempts to seek new and more expressive forms of photographic rendition through which to share with others their own visions of the world, their feelings, ideas, and thoughts?

Whenever I‘ve accompanied a photographer and been with him through the shoot the results come out well, else when the photographer goes on himself and shoots the building, it‘s been a mess. What is in my mind, is key to the architecture and the theme or concept or the quality of space, and unless I‘m there with the photographer does not come out in the photographs. Sometimes other photographs might look pretty, but they are completely inappropriate to what was on my mind. Maybe the photographer is often looking at the 2D composition to bring out a pretty picture rather than what is important. For a satisfactory photoshoot normally he tries to understand me and where I come from and I try to know what he can help me with and we work together and get the photographs of the building done. It is not about putting in his own ideas; it‘s about experiencing the space and bringing it out through photographs. Sometimes what are important to me might not be picture perfect pictures, but I feel that is what explains my idea of the building.

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Do you believe that photography has an expression of truth in revealing the story?

Yes, but it has a very lame expression of truth, like I said it‘s a momentary truth of that particular moment which is not essentially true for other moments. The danger would be that when you start considering that as a universal truth. Unless the space is shot at different points of time at different seasons and then studied it works, else it doesn‘t. As a photograph is not projecting various other aspects around the required view has to be selected with careful elimination of the unwanted. To conclude I feel photography is not the best way to communicate architecture and it is the best symbolic representation of the architecture. At times completely important aspects go absolutely missing just because the lens cannot cover it. Certain characteristics of a space cannot be captured thought some of them can be represented.

I find that black and white photography of architecture is slightly more truthful, just because you are not expecting to see the colours and textures so your eyes are drawn to the quality of light and contrast. In colour photography what I feel is that the colours don‘t look the same as you see in reality and also other aspects change radically in the photograph.

Your learning‘s/ opinion from architectural magazines/ blogs, instances where in you‘ve felt something has been overdone?

It‘s always like that. I‘ve over the years learned that the photograph can give you a glimpse of what the building is like, but I don‘t judge the architecture of the building looking at the photograph. All the fantastic architecture that is seen in most publications are not the same in reality.

Most of Ar. Stein‘s buildings had complex experiential spaces and greater detail which cannot be captured and communicated through a photograph.

On the other hand Ar. Correa‘s buildings, they are very badly detailed out but they have this one grand gesture so what photography had done here that it hides the detail by bringing out

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the particular view of the building. The building might look great in the photograph but the experience is nowhere close it.

Do you think contemporary architects aim all their activities toward getting to the magazine cover and not worrying whether the building will last beyond the photographers shooting session?

Not exactly. The nature of commissioning projects has a lot to do with this. These days they generally generate a 3D image and advertise the building in a particular aspect. These 3D images are quite similar to photographs, and the architect tries to bring out the notion of the building through these views. Maybe the client expresses a stunningly iconic 3D view, the architect has to provide him with one. I don‘t feel that photography is a culprit or the magazines are, but communicating and expressing architecture through a 3D medium with rendered images that end up being photographed in a later time.

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Appendix B

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Bibliography Architect biography. (n.d.). Rajeev Agarwal Architects. Retrieved January 9, 2012, from Rajeev Agarwal Architects: http://www.rajeevagarwal.com/ Artist biography. (n.d.). Retrieved December 17, 2011, from Asim Waqif: http://asimwaqif.com/#880111/Biography Busch, A. (1993). The photography of architecture: twelve views. John Wiley & Sons;.

Curl, D. H. (n.d.). Photocommunication: A Guide to Creative Photography. New York: Macmillan Publishing.

Elwall, R. (2004). Building with Light, The International History of Architectural Photography.

In M. Rothenstein, Color and Modern Architecture or the Photographic Eye (p. 195).

United Kingdom: Merrell Publishers Limited.

Feininger, A. (1965). The Complete Photography. In A. Feininger, The Complete

Photography (pp. 5,6). London: Thames and Hudson.

Greene, D. (2002). Foto-graph, Foto- Shop. In K. Rattenbury, This is Not Architecture (p.

121). London and New York: Routledge.

Katzenstein, B. (2008). HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY: Book Review. In C. R. Herschman, Architecture Transformed: A History of the Photography of

Buildings from 1839 to the Present. New York: MIT Press and the Architectural League of New York.

Morphogenesis. (n.d.). Morphogenesis. Retrieved November 16, 2011, from Morphogenesis: www.morphogenesis.org/data/about/people Nagera, J. M. (1996). Tropinature. Retrieved December 22, 2011, from Tropinature: http://www.tropinature.com/photohist/photohist04.html

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Pearl. (n.d.). Life at hok. Retrieved August 15, 2011, from Life at hok: http://hoklife.com/2009/07/16/julius-shulman/ Rattenbury, K. (2002). Iconic Pictures, This is not Media Architecture. London and New York: Routledge.

Saffronart. (2008). Saffronart Management Corporation. Retrieved November 18, 2011, from Saffronart: http://www.saffronart.com/artist/ Sauer-Thompson. (n.d.). Retrieved June 16, 2011, from sauer-thompson: http://www.sauerthompson.com/junkforcode/archives/2011/01/american-photog-7.html Scribd. (n.d.). Scribd. Retrieved June 13, 2011, from Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/49463267/Ezra-Stoller-Photography-and-Language-ofArchitecture Youngjin Yoo, K. L. (2002). Unbounded Innovation with Digitalization: A Case of Digital Camera. 8-10.

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Table of Figures Figure 1:

Julius Shulman, Case Study House #22., Gelatine silver print, 1960 _______________________ 5

Figure 2:

Chandigarh Parliament Building. Source: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/463401 _______ 13

Figure 3

Frederick Evans, Wells Cathedral: Stairway to Chapter House, 1903, http://onphotographydotorg.wordpress.com/ ___________________________________ 14

Figure 4

TWA Terminal at Idlewild (now JFK) Airport, Eero Saarinen, New York, NY, 1962, Gelatin Silver Print, © Ezra Stoller, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York ____________________________ 15

Figure 5:

TWA Terminal at Idlewild (now JFK) Airport, Eero Saarinen, New York, NY, 1962, Gelatin Silver Print, © Ezra Stoller, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York , http://www.dailyicon.net/2010/12/exhibition-photographs-by-ezra-stoller/ _______________ 15

Figure 6:

Frederick H. Evans, ‘View across the nave to the transept at York Minster’, 1901, Platinum print https://artblart.wordpress.com/tag/frederick-h-evans/ _______________________________ 16

Figure 7:

Frederick H. Evans, ‘York Minster – In Sure and Certain Hope’, 1903, Platinum print _________ 16

Figure 8:

Julius Shulman, Case Study House #22., gelatin silver print, 1960 _________________________ 16

Figure 9:

Cloud Gate, Chicago ____________________________________________________________ 21

Figure 10: The Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, California was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1957–62. This photo of the main entrance of the administration building was part of a 2009 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum.. ____________________________________________ 22 Figure 11: An example of a rendering of an HDRI tone-mapped image in a New York City night time cityscape. ____________________________________________________________________________ 24 Figure 12: Salk Institute by Louis I Khan, http://pingu.salk.edu/~hu Figure 13: Salk Institute by Louis I Khan, http://4.bp.blogspot.com/nter/photos/miscellaneous _________________________________ 26 Figure 14: Kodak No. 2 Brownie box camera, circa 1910(Top), 19th century studio camera ( Bottom) Source: Wikipedia, Janez Novak, Ljubljana, Slovenija _________________________________________ 27 Figure 15: Niepce’s earliest surviving photograph of a scene from nature, circa 1826, "View from the Window at Le Gras," Saint-Loup-de-Varennes (France); Source: Rebecca A. Moss, Coordinator of Visual Resources and Digital Content Library, via email. ______________________________________ 28

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Figure 16:

"Boulevard du Temple", taken by Louis Daguerre in late 1838 or early 1839;________________ 29

Figure 17:

A portable photography studio in 19th century Ireland. The wet collodion process sometimes gave rise to portable darkrooms, as photographic images needed to be developed while the plate was still wet. _____________________________________________________________________ 30

Figure 18:

Ur-Leica ("original Leica"), from 1914; Source: Leica Microsystems _______________________ 31

Figure 19: The film is 35 mm (1.4 in) wide. Each image is 36Ă—24 mm in the most common "full-frame" format (sometimes called "double-frame" for its relationship to the "single frame" 35 mm movie format).; Source: Wikipedia _____________________________________________________________ 31 Figure 20:

A Nikon D90 DSLR Camera; www.videography.com ___________________________________ 34

Figure 21:

An iphone with front and rear facing cameras, Source: Apple____________________________ 35

Figure 22:

A Facebook page ______________________________________________________________ 37

Figure 23:

A Photography Blog ____________________________________________________________ 37

Figure 24: Rabindra Bhavan Panels , Source: Mr. Ram Rahman, Refer Appendix B for the panels. ________ 38 Figure 25: Image via ARCHIZINES; www.architizer.com _________________________________________ 39 Figure 26: South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC),by Anagram Architects, photographed

by Mr. Asim Waqif. Source: www.anagramarchitects.com _____________________________ 40 Figure 27: MAXXI Museum in Rome by Zaha Hadid Architects; Photograph by Iwan Baan, www.archtracker.com __________________________________________________________ 42

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