Discovering a Passion for Architecture by Candia Peterson, ARPS

Photos by Candia Peterson, ARPS

Candia Peterson was born and brought up in London. After attending Oxford University she worked in investment banking for some 18 years whilst simultaneously working with her American architect husband, Paul Peterson, in developing the furniture and lighting designs of her grandfather, Sir Edwin Lutyens. When Candia decided she had had enough of the City, in 2003 the couple moved with their two children to the French Alps where, with the benefit of the Internet, they continued to expand and develop their business. Following Paul’s death in 2015, Candia continued to live in France, run the business and develop her passion for photography. However, in 2019, she moved to Upstate New York to be closer to her son and his wife, the beneficiary of the right to a Green Card as the mother of adult American citizens. Candia’s daughter is now a doctor in Dublin and her son, living in the same village as she does, is a real estate agent, a successful DJ and works with her part time. Candia was awarded an LRPS in 2017 and ARPS in 2021. She continues to run her design business and spends most of her spare time with her camera, occasionally selling her work. She became a grandmother for the first time in May 2022.

The Disney

In the years since I started taking my photography more seriously and moved beyond the snapshots of children and pets, I’m frequently asked – as I am sure we all are – what kind of photography I like to do. Until fairly recently, I don’t think I have had an answer to that, and I have had a sense that my photographic journey, whilst growing–some would say–in a degree of proficiency, has lacked a sense of purpose or recognisable style. Flippantly, I generally would answer “anything without a pulse” . To a large extent that has been true. I find myself irritated by people in a landscape – and I love landscapes – I have no interest in putting a person in a studio though I love working in my makeshift studio with still life, flowers and objects. Wildlife leaves me cold and, apart from occasional forays on to the street in an attempt to summon my inner Vivian Meier, I have always been drawn to the inanimate rather than the live and kicking. Having lived in the Alps for many years with a vast array of beauty on my doorstep, my photographic learning curve was intensely geared towards the great outdoors. However, much as I enjoy that and have taken one or two landscape photographs that I’m intensely proud of, I don’t feel that I am inherently or sentimentally a landscape photographer.

It was only on moving to the United States, I realised that my first and dominant true calling in photography is to architecture. Quite why this should have dawned on me so relatively late is a little surprising to me. As the grand daughter of Edwin Lutyens and the daughter and widow of architects and having lived in an architecturally submerged bubble my whole life, I guess I should have realised that there was something quite literally in my genes that drew me towards it as a subject.

What I also realised is that it is less the entire building than its details that grab me. I am fascinated by the small details, the way elements interact with each other and the degree to which abstraction can be found in the built environment.

Though I still live deep in the rural countryside having swapped the Alps for the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York, “The City” is a manageable (3-hour) drive away and, as it has reopened, I have made frequent trips down there looking at buildings old and new. However, it was the chance to join renowned architectural photographer Angie McMonigal on a workshop in Los Angeles this February that I leapt at with great enthusiasm.

I have been fortunate in that work and play have taken me to Los Angeles very frequently and I feel I know it a little, but I have never had the chance to explore some of the fabulous buildings with a camera in my hand. Los Angeles is an urban sprawl bisected by a couple of freeways, yet it remains a series of connected villages and districts, each very different and with its own function and characteristics. We based ourselves in the “downtown” area where we were seconds’ walk away from two of the finest buildings in the wider city: the Disney Concert hall and The Broad (pronounced Brode) art gallery. Both are utterly unique and striking both inside and out.

City Hall Reflection

Interior Westin Bonaventura

The Board

The Disney is very characteristic of Frank Gehry and instantly recognisable as such. Its curved and glittering steel panels create shapes and vistas that lend themselves wonderfully to abstract details. Above street level, its multi-level terraced gardens give whole new angles and – not visible from the street – several surfaces that are highly polished, as opposed to satin, and these create lovely intersections of reflection, bouncing the blue Southern California sky from one side to the other.

The Disney occupies a whole block and The Broad occupies the whole block nex tdoor. I have put in the website address as, so entranced was I by the details that I clean forgot to take many images of the entire building – indeed it was quite difficult to do so from the other side of the busy road. Suffice it to say that it is an extraordinary piece of architecture comprising a veil and a vault. The cloak of the veil is the external structure with its pattern of slits collapsing into the black hole of its “eye” . The vault is the core of the building through which you rise up to the main art collections. Once there, the light is magically filtered through the slits offering perfect conditions both for viewing the artworks and – in my case – clicking away.

Skyscraper

Vespertine

A short distance from these buildings down the quaint cable car known as Angel’s Flight, you find yourself in the City Hall area with police headquarters, the courts, the LA Times and various other administrative buildings. Anyone who has binged on the multiple seasons of the TV show Bosch (and if not, why not?!) will be intrinsically familiar with the area without having been there. This is a feast of modern architecture in a small radius and there is so much to observe and interpret with the lens. I think we spent an hour or so there and I could have spent all day.

Slightly out of the city centre, we spent a very pleasant chunk of the day at the Getty Museum by Richard Meier. Here the blue sky comes into its own as the bright white buildings inter mixed with others in a pale sandstone, punctuated with glass and steel connecting details, are made to be offset against a bright and intense backdrop of deep azure. Without even venturing inside there are infinite possibilities for photography from the architectural details to the juxtaposition of the various buildings to the planting scheme and off out towards the desert beyond. Such a worthwhile day.

The number of buildings we visited on this three day extravaganza on architectural amazingness is too numerous to document with the number of images I’m allowed on these pages but a couple of honourable mentions go to the Vespertine in Culver City – an edifice of red shuttering concealing a restaurant behind and the bizarre 1970s edifice that is the Westin Bonaventura Hotel – whose brutalist massing of concrete and steel is certainly of its time.

Overall, this was a wonderful and rewarding workshop and Angie McMonigal is an inspirational guide whose work I greatly admire. This was not a “get out your tripod and contemplate the view” experience. We moved relatively quickly from building to building, around each building, inside many of them and mostly looking at them up close and in detail rather than from afar. We put in a lot of steps and alot of miles so it was important to keep the weight down and the faffing with kit to a minimum.

This happens to suit my preferred style, and apart from a wide angle prime that I kept largely in my bag, I used a lightweight mirrorless camera (Fuji X-S10) and a single lens, my much-loved Tamron 16-300. The versatility for this sort of shooting was unsurpassed and the quality of light was such that quick decisions made rapidly required little readjustment of settings from shot to shot. Much as I realised that this is a genre with which I have rapidly come to love and enjoy above all others, I also realised that it suits my temperament and gives me a process that excites me. I feel that I am set on a path towards specialisation in architectural details; that form and structure, particularly when delivering a degree of abstraction, lights my photographic fire and I’m excited for the excursions to come this year.

The Getty Centre

www.candiapeterson.com