Archinect - News

Architectural Photography without Architecture

2013-05-13T13:44:00-04:00

Slowly it dawned on me that this was not a photograph of a real building but a total digital fabrication. I was shocked, not in a moralistic way but, rather, with amazement at the masterful deception and amused pique at being fooled.

The technologies of representing architecture have advanced steadily over the years, from drawing to photography to digital rendering — and have lately taken a new leap.

On Places, Belmont Freeman argues, "the crafts of architectural rendering and photography have now merged into a common activity of digital image-making — so completely that one can conceive a work of architecture and produce a 'photograph' of it without having to go through the expensive, tedious and corrupting intermediate step of actually building the building. Welcome to the world of architectural photography without architecture."

He discusses the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibitions "After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography in the Digital Age" and "Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop"; the MoMA exhibition "9 + 1 Ways of Being Political: 50 Years of Political Stances in Architecture and Urban Design," and recent books of photography by Frédéric Chauban and Ezra Stoller.

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Euromaxx documents architecture-photographer-extraordinaire Iwan Baan

2013-05-08T15:41:00-04:00

Iwan's photography always surprises me. It allows me to see my buildings with different eyes. His pictures always remind me how important the surroundings are... the context the building is in. - Toyo Ito

Ezra Stoller, The Photographer Who Made Architects Famous

2013-03-01T14:10:00-05:00

The task is to capture the intention behind someone else's design — to distill the philosophy of a building into a single, digestible image that transcends explanation. It's not easy, but when it's done well it looks effortless... "I'm not interested in art photography," Ezra Stoller once said in an interview. "I'm interested in architecture as it is, to look at and enjoy. But what I do is a job of work, that is what it is."

An Architectural Photographer on Saving Russia’s Wooden Churches

2013-02-21T03:06:00-05:00

Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” is the result.

Balthazar Korab - R.I.P.

2013-01-27T18:32:00-05:00

“I am an architect with a passion for nature’s lessons and man’s interventions” was how Mr. Korab described himself in a statement on his Web site, balthazarkorab.com.

Yesterday Jan 26th, David Dunlap reported that Balthazar Korab's death had been confirmed by his wife. Mr. Korab, one of the leading architectural photographers in the period after World War II, died on Jan. 15 in Royal Oak, Mich, at age 86. Mr. Korab’s archive is housed at the Library of Congress.

Ezra Stoller’s Architectural Studies

2012-10-19T12:55:00-04:00

Decades ago, Erica Stoller accompanied her father, the architectural photographer Ezra Stoller, on a shoot of the Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza in New York. It was cavernous and dark, but Ezra insisted that a shaft of light would burst through in 15 minutes. “The plaza was full of sun,” she remembers. “It did just what he told it to do.”

John Comazzi Publishes Biography of Photographer Balthazar Korab

2012-08-08T14:19:00-04:00

A new illustrated biography, Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography, by John Comazzi at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture tells the story of Balthazar Korab, one of the mid-twentieth century's most celebrated architecture photographers. It's the first book dedicated solely to Korab's life and career, with a portfolio of more than two hundred images from Korab's professionally commissioned architecture photography as well as close examinations of Saarinen's TWA Terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and the Miller House in Columbus, Indiana.

Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography is available from Princeton Architectural Press.

Pedro E. Guerrero: Frank Lloyd Wright's photographer

2012-03-29T17:07:00-04:00

Emily Bills, director of the Julius Shulman Institute at Woodbury University and co-curator of the exhibit, said the goal was to show how Guerrero, built a career in parallel to photographers such as Shulman but with less fame.

Los Angeles Times interviews Curator / Historian Emily Bills on photographer Pedro E. Guerrero, who is known as Frank Lloyd Wright's photographer. Exhibition and the talk by the artist are not to be missed.

The exhibit runs April 5 to 25 at Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery, 6518 Hollywood Blvd., L.A. The artist, in his 90s, is scheduled to talk at 6:30 p.m. April 5 next door at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 6522 Hollywood Blvd.; (323) 957-1777