#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. While we use 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.
We spoke to Sinziana Velicescu, the photographer behind @casualtimetravel. Sun-bleached stucco and anonymous warehouses reveal the Los Angeles periphery as an undoubtable influence on Velicescu's photography, which perhaps lends it a unique presence on the image-based platform: though the fabled city is often represented in Hollywood blockbusters as a glittering Edenic backdrop, @casualtimetravel presents that same city - with all its scars and signs of indifference - critically yet lovingly in the foreground. The city is a bone-dry collection of expedient construction deadlines; Velicescu gives us time to reflect on these hurried structures.
What is your relationship to architecture?
I photograph it. I took an architecture class in college and was really good at it, sometimes I wish I might have pursued it as a career but I’m happy just to get to document it for now. I shoot commercially for various firms as well.
How did @casualtimetravel begin?
It used to be my AIM screen name in high school and then I just appropriated it as my instagram account name and somehow the photos I was taking seemed to work well with the name so I never really changed it to anything else.
What have you hoped to communicate about architecture or the built environment through your posts?
A lot of my work involves abstracting architectural details and exists in such a way that puts shapes, form, and composition before the actual subject.
Each photograph, however, is tied to a geographic location and represents a frame that makes up the whole of that particular place. Frames are bound by borders and almost never show us the whole truth – and so I am interested in creating my own imaginary world out of the environment around me.
How much is your photographic sensibility influenced by being based in Los Angeles?
A lot of it. I grew up in a horrendous looking 80s stucco condominium in north east LA. I have an affinity for funky strip malls, dingbat apartments, complicated parking structures, concrete churches, and questionable desert architecture - essentially the essence of LA / Southern California in a nutshell.
Has Instagram (or social media in general) affected your views toward the profession?
Instagram has been a great platform that has allowed me to connect with like minded artists and individuals from around the world.
There’s a whole “scene” of photographers I connected with in the early days (shout out to #theweekendwalkabout) that helped me realize I’m not alone in my interest in “photographing walls” (as my little sister likes to put it).
Do you post your work anywhere else online? What is your social media channel of choice?
I post on Tumblr - but that’s more of an automatic feed that I line up about a month in advance. I would say Instagram is the one I post to daily, though with all the new algorithms, it’s becoming harder to see more of a variety of other people’s work.
What are some of your favorite Instagram profiles to follow?
@eliot_lee_hazel, @elizavetaporodina, @kyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyle and @jackdavisonphoto
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