As a photographer, I am drawn to the expressive power of buildings.  Provocatively capturing architecture in an abstract, graphic way keenly interests me.  My intention is to make compelling photographs that remove the context and distill architecture to nothing but relationships of shape, line, form, pattern, detail, tone, and texture. 

 

Architecture forms the physical environment of our lives.  It connects us to the past, it helps define our relationships to one another, and it gives us a sense of place and identity.  Architecture also embodies our values and expresses our individual and collective aspirations.  And most importantly, architecture enhances and advances our creative legacy.  Yet something so integral to the sense of who we are - something that contributes immeasurably to our quality of life – is often dismissed as mundane, taken for granted, or at worst ignored.  My ambition is to raise awareness of and appreciation for architecture by presenting it as engaging and dynamic geometric arrangements and interactions.  More concisely expressed, I use photography to substantiate the connection between art and architecture.

 

In its early days, photography was referred to as the art of fixing a shadow.  What a novel, yet appropriate definition.  Taking some liberty with that reference, I would describe my photographic style as the art of fixing a building, portraying architecture in original ways that include:

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• calibrating precisely the placement of all lines, shapes, forms, and shadows to end at the edges of the composition,

• showcasing the range and subtlety of black and white photographic values by depicting the interplay of lights and shadows buildings evoke,

• exploiting unusual vantage points to craft spatial ambiguities between buildings,

• flattening space, to fashion collages in which buildings are juxtaposed on the same plane,

• highlighting a building's repetitive elements to suggest associations and contrasts between recurring facets,

• cropping negatives tightly to generate altered perspectives of buildings,

• concentrating on a building's sculptural qualities to reinforce its design,

• isolating a distinct architectural component to emphasize a building's essence, and

• utilizing the sky as an integral feature of a composition to accentuate a building’s contour.

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My aim is to photograph buildings in arresting ways, creating compositions that do not immediately reveal themselves as architecture.  Buildings present rich opportunities for me to imaginatively explore the angle, the cube, the curve, the triangle, and the rectangle.  By examining these forms individually or by grouping them into unconventional configurations, I aspire to challenge and captivate people by introducing them to architecture’s intriguing visual possibilities.    

 

The celebrated photographer Minor White once said “I photograph not for what a thing was, but for what else it might be.”  These words perfectly and eloquently express my own motivation in photographing architecture.