Architecture v Photography Tom Manley – Hypostyle Talk Shop – September 1st
‘Photography as an artistic means to kindle a greater awareness of significance of architecture‘ ‘Our everyday world is in greater measure defined by the architecture that surrounds us day in – day out’ (Andreas Gursky - photographer) • • • •
What and how important is photography in communicating a design / building? How has Photography impacted on architecture – similarities between mediums? Has photography helped to establish new styles in architecture? How can an understanding of photography help an architect realize architecture, informing the aesthetics of a building?
Photography has developed extremely rapidly as technical advances have moved forward – compared to the use of pens and pencils for representing architecture, it is a comparatively modern technique. The break through of print, and combining text with images from around 1880 led to the production of architectural magazines – enabling architecture to reach wide audiences. Photographs let architects experience buildings they could not directly interact with. In some ways this medium took off as a way of documenting everything – enabling designs to be copied / plagiarism – informing designs and helping with the processes of globalisation and industrialisation / mass production. Today’s digital world gives even more importance to photographic images. The use of internet / advertising, blogging sites and photomontage visualisations has perhaps made it less valuable as now photographic images are everywhere, and the price of software / equipment has fallen. Computers enable photographic images of buildings to be made before buildings have been constructed and it is hard to tell whether a photograph is a genuine portrayal or has been modified. However photography can often have a powerful impact both in its journalistic and documenting abilities and as an art-form. Photography is the most accurate way of telling a story or capturing a moment in time. Iconic images go down in history and are imprinted in our memories. Architecturally, iconic buildings are captured and communicated via photography and this is a process used more and more with the design and styling of current iconic & ‘status symbol buildings’ ie Guggenheim in Bilbao – where it is photography that sells the bulding.