Architectural Photography as Medium of (Re)presentation and Construction of Architecture
2019
+
ABSTRACT
The present book discusses the role and the
meaning of architectural photography in architecture. The aim is to investigate
and outline the complex relationship between architecture and architectural
photography in order to demonstrate a subtle, but important joint between them.
In the text, I call it architectural joint, which is actually the idea itself
– an idea that has the power to shape our understanding of architecture and to
open new themes for its discussion and material production.
The central hypothesis and the starting point of this
work is that architectural photography is not simply a representation of some
built, concrete architecture, which functions as photography’s referent,
rather, insofar as it is successful, it works also as a medium of
architecture’s presentation; it can render architecture present. Indeed, with
the use of techniques that are immanent to the photographic medium,
architectural photography can achieve even more: it can become the medium of
architectural construction. Through examples of work of some well-known
photographers and my own photographic series I explored, explained and argued three aspects of constructing the architectural joint: photography as a
manipulation of reality, photography as a construction of architecture and
photography as an emanation of directness. At the same time, I tried to
define the possibilities of photographer’s practice nowadays, which at first
glance mistakenly seems to offer a limited universe of ideas and images that
are constantly repeating, but never break through or show things in their
openness or possible redefinition.
