Untitled. © Collin Pollard

#ArchinectMeets is a series of interviews with members of the architecture community that use Instagram as a creative medium. With the series, we ask some of Instagram’s architectural photographers, producers and curators about their relationship to the social media platform and how it has affected their practice. 

Social media has undeniably affected the way we perceive, interpret and share opinions about architecture today. Using our own account, @Archinect, as a site for image curation and news content, we wanted to ask fellow Instagram users how they navigated the platform as well as their thoughts on social media's impact on architecture.

We spoke with Collin Pollard (@collpol19), a photographer and image producer based in the San Francisco based area. Though Pollard has only been posting his work online for a year, its bold coloring and rugged yet minimal surfaces have quickly gained him a following.

What is your relationship to architecture? 

Architecture is all around us. It is something that dictates how we navigate our day to day lives and that has been something I've been thinking about more and more lately. We all have relationships to architecture whether the individual acknowledges it or not. For me personally, I love walking around looking at different buildings, I see them as almost performance art depending on how the light hits them.

How did @collpol19 begin?

Collpoll19 was actually my personal account when I first joined Instagram. I made a separate photo account (@cbpollar) when I was first starting out where I posted all of my early photography edits. Once I gained a little bit more confidence in my photography (about a year ago), I decided to start posting on my personal account to show my friends what I had been working on in my free time. 

How do you produce your imagery? About how long does each image take to produce?

My process is very thought out, but very fluid at the same time. 

I will go out and walk around my neighborhood scouting out different locations to potentially shoot. Once I've found a location that covers all my basic criteria, I'll go back at different times of day to see which light works best with the location. I'll then take multiple shots of the building at different angles and then head home and upload them into photoshop. 

Once in photoshop, I choose one central element to base the piece off of (this could be a certain color or shape or texture). From there I go in and rearrange the composition and change the other colors to match my vision for the final piece. Images can take anywhere between an hour to multiple weeks, it really just depends.

What have you hoped to communicate about architecture through your posts?

My biggest point I try and communicate through my artwork is that the idea of colors being inherently masculine or feminine is ridiculous. One example is this idea that growing up, boys should like blue and girls should like pink. 

My work is not necessarily focused on the building itself. Instead, I try and use the architecture as a metaphor for deeper issues of how we as a society see colors and gender norms.

Has Instagram (or social media in general) affected your views toward the architectural profession or the built environment?

I think Instagram can be a great tool for getting work seen by as many people as possible. However, it is never my intention for my work to solely live on the platform. 

I have found that Instagram promotes very shallow interactions among its users and that has definitely shifted how I view the world in a conceptual sense considering how we are all attached to our phones to some degree. 

This shift in personal perspective has been crucial to my growth as an artist which I will always be thankful for!

What photographers/image producers have you turned to for inspiration?

I find a lot of my inspiration from painters like David Hockney and Rene Magritte. Since my work is focused heavily on architecture, I really admire sculptors like Karla Black. 

In terms of artists who work primarily in photography, I really admire Thomas Demand and Hayley Eichenbaum.

Do you post your work anywhere else online? Is Instagram your social media channel of choice?

Instagram is the only social media I use in regards to my photography, but I do have a website where I post my personal favorites and make announcements on upcoming exhibitions and print sales!

What are some of your favorite Instagram profiles to follow?

Some of my favorites are Neil Krug (@neilkrug), Hayley Eichenbaum (@inter_disciplinary), and Modern Paintings & Sculptures (@modernabstraction)