Charles Deaton house by Charles Deaton Architect, Colorado 2001. Photo by Undine Pröhl.
Most of us experience famous architecture through photographs. We can all mentally picture buildings like the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House, even if we haven't been there. But there's a whole niche of architecture photography that's more about how a building feels than how it looks.
A recent exhibit Beyond the Assignment: Defining Photographs of Architecture and Design in Los Angeles focuses on just that – a more subjective view than the expected shots of stunning edifices and stiff models.
These photographers “aim to create lasting visual impressions in an age when limitless architecture and design news can be digested and forgotten in seconds on the web,” says Bilyana Dimitrova, the show’s curator, herself a photographer and photo editor.
The show includes 10 professional architectural photographers whose work is a far cry from the "house porn" lampooned on the blog Unhappy Hipsters or the digital renderings of architecture that can intricately simulate use patterns, light movements, and seismic reactions as convincingly as if the building was part of a video game.
Paul Warchol proves there are always other scenes to capture around the margins of an iconic image. He takes on some of the most well-known buildings in the world: Egypt's pyramids. But, like the other photographers in this show, he chose an unfamiliar angle and foregrounded an intimately scaled view of a subterranean dwelling aglow with firelight.
The signature steel waves of a Frank Gehry concert hall in upstate New York, shot by Dimitrova, are relegated to the edge of her frame. She deems their relation to the forms of tree branches and clouds as essential.
“Through the dissemination of our images by the media,” writes Dimitrova, “We define how the public sees the built environment. Despite that, we are anonymous figures hidden behind the projects we shoot.”
Villa dall'Ava by Rem Koolhaas, Paris 1991. Photo by Peter Aaron/ OTTO.
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