Stunning Architectural Photos That Reveal How We Live

Photographer Michael Wolf’s “Architecture of Density” series focuses on the looming scale of high-rises in Hong Kong. This photo, *No. 39*, was taken in 2005. “At some point I just took a photograph and I folded away the sky and the horizon until I just had the pure architecture,” the photographer says.

Modern architectural photo porn is a familiar genre in which a building is shot in the best possible light to emphasize its most flattering attributes while Photoshopping away the rest. A new book and a current London exhibition show how the art of photography can serve not only to document architecture, which photographers have been doing since the birth of the medium, but to help reveal larger truths about our relationship to the world.

In the introduction to Shooting Space: Architecture in Contemporary Photography, author and curator Elias Redstone recalls Walter Benjamin’s observation that buildings can be viewed more easily in a photograph than in person. “This is as true now as when Benjamin wrote it in the 1930s, both in terms of ease of access and as a way of digesting a work of architecture, which is often a complex and layered spatial experience in reality,” Redstone writes.

A photograph, he writes, is more easily parsed than an architect’s blueprints. It’s also more immediate than a video. “A photograph has the ability to influence and transform the way people perceive and value a building,” Redstone says. “Although mediated, a photograph can appear more real than the building itself, as it is the image consumed most widely. However, photography is by its nature subjective and presents a highly personalized view of the world.”

The book includes chapters that look at photography’s historic role in helping to create iconic buildings, documenting change in cities, and revealing the ways in which man alters the natural landscape. It features 50 photographs in which artists look “beyond the surface of a building,” Redstone writes, and respond to “architecture as a subject that can reveal wider truths about society, to explore the factors that have shaped our physical environment and our place within it.”

Photo of the Chaotianmen Bridge, the longest arched bridge in the world, under construction by Nadav Kander — *Chongqing XI,* Chongqing Municipality, China, Nadav Kander, 2007. Kander spent three years photographing the Yangtze River. This photo of the Chaotianmen Bridge, the longest arched bridge in the world, under construction offers a glimpse of China’s rapid urbanization.

Suzhou Creek, Putuo District, Shanghai, Sze Tsung Leong, 2004 — *Suzhou Creek, Putuo District, Shanghai*, Sze Tsung Leong, 2004.

Photographer Geert Goiris’ images of deserted architecture in various states of abandonment or ruin include the Ministry of Transportation in Tbilisi, Georgia, 1975.

Untitled No. 2, Filip Dujardin, 2007-11 — *Untitled No. 2,* Filip Dujardin, 2007-11. In his series “Fictions,” Dujardin photographs architectural components, textures, and landscapes in and around his hometown of Ghent, Belgium, then reconfigures them into nearly plausible surreal images.

Frédéric Chaubin’s highly stylized and romantic photographs bring attention to atypical examples of architecture dating from the late Soviet era, like the Druzhba Sanatorium, Yalta, 1984.

*Courtyard Buildings 18 and 19,* Gunkanjima, Japan, 2012. Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre’s photograph of the Japanese phantom island of Gunkanjima (“The Battleship”), once one of the most densely populated places in the world.

Valley (Jing’an), Shanghai, 2007 by Bas Princen — *Valley (Jing’an)*, Shanghai, 2007. Bas Princen trained as an industrial designer and architect before turning to photography. His work focuses on the ambiguity and tension of the relationship between construction and landscape.

Redstone is also the co-curator of an exhibition inspired by his research for the book Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age at London’s Barbican Art Gallery through Jan. 11. It features 250 works by 18 photographers from the 1930s to the present, some of which are featured below.

Stephen Shore's photograph of Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, June 21, 1974.

Simon Norfolk's photo of the former Soviet-era Palace of Culture, Kabul, Afghanistan, 2001-02.

Torre David No. 2, Caracas, Venezuela, Iwan Baan, 2011 — *Torre David No. 2*, Caracas, Venezuela, Iwan Baan, 2011.

20. Bas Princen, Cooling plant, Dubai, 2009 — *Cooling Plant*, Dubai, Bas Princen, 2009.

21. Bas Princen, 'Mokattam ridge' (garbage recycling city), 2009 — *Mokattam Ridge (Garbage Recycling City)*, Cairo, Bas Princen, 2009.