Which architectural photographers shoot traditional & classical buildings?

[sandy_sorlien]

Hello everyone,

 

I am preparing a slide lecture about the photography of Traditional

Houses, Streets, and Towns, which I will present June 20 to an

audience of architects and urban planners. As this is my own subject,

I will include some slides of my work. But I want others, both

contemporary and historical. I have some books I can shoot from of

Atget, David Plowden, Jerome Liebling, Steven Brooke, Wright Morris,

etc. but I'm not in the loop of professional architectural

photographers who shoot for clients and have shot a lot of Traditional

and Classical subjects (in addition to the ubiquitous Modernism). For

example, the work of Steve Rosenthal in the March/April View Camera

could be useful. I am especially interested in shots of contemporary

Classical houses and other buildings, as they are hard to find.

 

I'm sure some of you on this list have done this kind of work, or

would have some names for me. I'd prefer published work so I can shoot

from books, but if someone wants to send me some dupe slides I'll

consider them.

 

(Anyone have Maxwell MacKenzie's phone number or email? I lost it....)

 

Thanks,

Sandy

[andrew_oneill]

I had a book by Norman McGrath (MacGrath....forgot the spelling) called, "Photographing Buildings Inside and Out". You may want to check him out.

[dan_smith]

Check out the work of Morley Baer. His book, Painted Ladies, features the architecture of the homes of San Francisco. Excellent images. He was one of the best architectural photograhers in California for some time. His latest book, published posthumously, California Plain, is one of the barns of the California area near where he lived. Very good work. Not architectural detail work but more of the structure in its setting. A good change from the close work so often seen.

[michael_kravit]

Hello Sandy,

 

Sounds like you are going to have a successful lecture.

 

There are a number of books that have been published on the subject of

conemporary classical structures. You may want to check oy Rizolli Press as

they do a lot of this type of monograph.

 

A book entitled 20th C Architecture by Jonathan Glancey publsihed by

Carlton might be helpful.

 

Michael

 

Michael J. Kravit, AIA

Architect/Photographer

[igor_johanson]

Please check www pages of Wieslaw Zdaniewski for nearly abstract depiction of modern architecture: http://www.users.nac.net/wieslaw/Patrialab/skyscrapers/index.html

 

and also this forum for rural America in the Walker Evans tradition:

 

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=304981

[jnorman2]

how about the HABS collection online at the LOC? how about the "great buildings" website? tons of useable architectural images of all kinds. i would be careful photographing things out of books due to potential copyright infringement issues. you might also want to include some "main street" type shots as the streetscape as a whole is of at least as much interest to urban planners as individual buildings. one of my books, "oregon main street: a rephotographic survey", might be helpful for this aspect. good luck.

[james_driscoll2]

Sandy,

 

email me privately at JDRISCOLL2@si.rr.com.

 

I was one of the photographers on a book called 1000 NY

Buildings. And I have just completed a book called 1000 Paris

Buildings.

 

thanks

james driscoll

[walter_glover]

Sandy,

 

Since I am not American I can only summise just what your finer

interpreation of 'Traditional & Classical' is. Does it, for example

include both vernacular and grand buildings.

 

Looking through my bookshel I have come up with some books

that may be on target.

 

"The Idea Of Louis Sullivan" by John Szarkowski - Thames &

Hudson ISBN: 0-500-34179-6

 

"Architecture Transformed" by Cervin Robinson M.I.T. & The

Architectural league Of New York ISBN: 0-262-18121-5

 

"Cleveland, Ohio" by Cervin Robinson Cleveland Museum of Art

in cooperation with Indiana University Press ISBN:

0-910386-98-6

 

And on a less formal approach:

 

"Haunter Of Ruins - The Photography Of Clarence John

Laughlin" Bullfinch ISBN: 0-8212-2361-5

 

I hope that this is of some assistance. Good luck with your

project. If only people were as interested in what has been built

in Australia. Damn! I'll have to make them ibnterested.

 

Walter Glover

[geoffrey_james]

Sandy,

 

I'm not sure what your real subject is here. (As in "contemporary Classical

houses). Does traditional mean old houses, vernacular housing or what ?

For classical modernism you can't do better than Julius Schulman and his

wonderful record of LA modernism. And how come no one has mentioned

Walker Evans ? Too obvious ? Check out George Tice's Paterson book. You

might want to look at the work of Thomas Roma who only photographs in

Brooklyn and occasionally Sicily. Look at his latest book, Sanctuary, which is

about evangelical churches in a Brooklyn that looks like the roughest

sections of Bogota. This will be good for planners to look at. Good luck,

Geoffrey James

[tim_atherton2]

Sandy, can you explain a bit more what you mean by "Traditional Houses, Streets, and Towns"?

 

And do you mean contemproary houses streets and towns? or contemporary/traditional/classical - along the lines of Chuckyville (Prince Charles village of Poundbury) and Seaside?

 

This is an area that interests me - contemporary models of town/urban planning, where it's working and where it isnt and why; suburban and extra-urban communitites etc.; the extended suburbs as a state of mind rather than a physical place. Nostalgia as a reaction to modernism and more :-)

 

tim

[sandy_sorlien]

Hi everyone,

 

Thanks for your answers and questions. Tim, I love that "Chuckyville" -- I'll have to tell my English architecture friends that one. YES you are on the right track -- I am a card-carrying New Urbanist and in fact this presentation is for the CNU Congress in Washington. Anyone who cares about the built environment should check out their site cnu.org. I have shot Seaside and Kentlands myself so I'll include a few of those. Steven Brooke did a beautiful book on Seaside shot with an Arca 6x9; unfortunately I gave it away as a gift so I'll have to order another.

 

Most (not all) of Shulman's best work is pure modernism - those LA houses are modernist NOT classcial or traditional. Modernism is anti-tradition. "Traditional" would include old, new, vernacular, classical -- but they would all have connections to original building traditions of the region in which they are found.

 

I have a beautiful book of the work of architect Thomas Gordon Smith - various photographers. He is a contemporary Classicist.

 

Walter, thanks for reminding me about Laughlin -- he's a great example of romantic style which flatters traditional old places. And jnorman thanks for reminding me about your book which I meant to order long ago. Will do so now!

 

Keep the ideas coming.

 

Cheers,

Sandy

[sandy_sorlien]

PS Tim ---

 

"Nostalgia" is an honorable notion which has gotten in with a bad crowd (Thomas Kincaid, etc.). "Nostalgia" is from the Greek and means almost literally "homesickness" - a desire to return to one's home place. A powerful longing, and an important one for place-makers to acknowledge.

 

Sandy

[tim_atherton2]

PS Tim ---

 

""Nostalgia" is an honorable notion which has gotten in with a bad crowd (Thomas Kincaid, etc.). "Nostalgia" is from the Greek and means almost literally "homesickness" - a desire to return to one's home place. A powerful longing, and an important one for place-makers to acknowledge."

 

But what happens when it is combined with the sentimental...?

[tim_atherton2]

"I love that "Chuckyville" -- I'll

have to tell my English architecture friends that one.

 

Went to visit a distant aunt in Dorchester a couple of years ago - it was how the locals referred to it (well, the more charitable way they referred to it... :-) )

 

tim

[tim_atherton2]

PS - I prefer Kundera's take on nostalgia: "The word, as Kundera reminds us, is derived from the Greek nostos ("return") and algos ("pain, grief, sorrow"). In Kundera's novel, however, the term assumes a double meaning: not only of sorrow caused by the desire to return but also of pain caused by actual return. For Kundera, nostalgia is a profoundly deceptive sentiment. The author points out that in Spanish, the word for nostalgia or longing is añoranza, related, via the Catalan, to the Latin word ignorantia. We feel nostalgic because we no longer know the place or person or the moment in the past we long for. When nostalgia settles in, the object of desire is already fading. Nostalgia, writes Kundera, is a self-sufficient sentiment, "fully absorbed ... by its suffering and nothing else." In other words, it is a form of not knowing, and it rarely survives a confrontation with reality"

 

:-)

[geoffrey_james]

Sandy,

 

I think you are setting up false dichotomies here -- modernist vs. traditional.

Unless that is you are the architectural equivalent of a moldy fig in the jazz

world -- one of those who believes there is no "real" jazz after New Orleans.

Surely the best of the LA modernist houses are a real and sensitive response

to the landscape and climate of the West Coast. Whether they have

neoclassical decorative elements is neither here nor there. And at certain

point everything becomes part of a tradition. Modernism is not the issue, I

would suggest, just debased developer commercialism and the reliance on

the internal combustion engine.

[sandy_sorlien]

Hi Geoffrey,

 

Moldy fig? Uh-oh. I'm gonna have to spend a lot of time on this answer. Actually if you want to pursue it off-list I'd be happy to send you some copies of all the long posts from the TradArch forum I'm on. We've been going over these issues there for a couple of weeks and I'm plumb worn out. Well, I do agree with your characterization of some Modernist houses as being regionally sensitive - particularly in the desert, I find, where a certain sterility and coolness seems appropriate, but unfortunately most of them are not. You wouldn't have a clue whether they're in the Florida Panhandle or The U.P. of Michigan by looking at them, aside from the foliage.

 

Your other point about the sorry state of the built environment is correct about the autombile culture, but I believe incorrect about Modernism. Modernism made it OK to build bland ugly boxes with alienating facades and that is what we have. Modernism is also a culture of the machine, including the automobile.

 

True Classicism is not only about ornament. It is about proportion and scale, relating to the human being in a most fundamental way.

 

I do agree that bad design is bad whether it is Modernist or Traditional, and that some of Richard Neutra's houses in CA are pretty cool to see in Shulman's photographs. But IMHO some photographers prefer to photograph glass cantilevered houses with acute angles because they can show off their razzle-dazzle technique. Photography of traditional buildings is a quieter enterprise.

 

Cheers,

Sandy

[michael_mutmansky1]

Sandy,

 

Ezra Stoller comes to mind as one photographer that has done work on traditional architecture, specifically the book 'The Galveston that Was", detailing the victorian architecture of Galveston, Tx.

 

He has photographed a number of other projects over the course of his career, but I don't know if anything else would be of interest to you. He started shooting in the 30's, so he has quite a history of projects out there, although his career grew out of modernism, along with people the likes of Philip Johnson and others.

 

My recollection is the Galveston book was shot in the 50's sometime, all in black and white. The intent was to record the largely victorian neighborhoods that were beginning to fall into ruin and decay. My recollection is that Galveston now has one of the largest victorian historic districts in the US.

 

---Michael

[tim_atherton2]

I've just been perusing the New Urbanism site (which is of LF interest to my because my LF photography is party concerned with urbanism, extra-urbanism, the suburbs as a state of ind rather than place etc). Anyway, I was surised it was hard to find any serious reference to Jane Jacobs? I would have thought she was the "new urbanist" par excellence?

[tim_atherton2]

lets try that again...

 

I've just been perusing the New Urbanism site (which is of LF interest to me

because my LF photography is partly concerned with urbanism, extra-urbanism, the

suburbs as a state of mind rather than place etc). Anyway, I was suprised it was

hard to find any serious reference to Jane Jacobs? I would have thought she was

the "new urbanist" par excellence?

[struan_gray]

The Nordic countries have a history of trying to influence the

social structure of their suburbs through street planning,

architecture and design that has its modern roots in a post-war

abandonment of the countryside. It used to take the form of

hi-rise housing developments as hideous and monotonous as

those in other European countries, but humanised by the forcible

inclusion of shops and playgrounds, and the banishment of

cars. These days, it tends to be a sort of cost-sensitive

sentimentality.

 

The buildings are more famous than anyone who photographs

them, but here are a couple of links if you want to follow the idea

up:

 

http://www.byen.org/hjarup/hjarup.eng.html

 

http://www.sweden.se/templates/FactSheet____3112.asp

 

http://www.arkitekturbilleder.dk/