Space Framed (Photography, Architecture and the Social Landscape)

Just as architecture seeks to frame and shape human activity in a given setting, photography has recourse to similar devices of framing and ‘constructing’. Taking the point of view of the photographer engaging with some aspect of the designed and inhabited environment, this book examines the relationship between architecture and photography. A series of essays focus on the resonances and relationships which the photographer realises between the techniques and the products of photography on the one hand, and the characteristics and processes of buildings and terrains on the other. The book reveals the resonances and rhymes between the two as they occur at different scales, at different times and in different settings. There is an overarching focus on constructed space – from cities and landscapes to the single anonymous room - and the question of how it is inhabited. Thus, the photographs examined become vehicles for thinking about the co-existence between individuals and social groups and their surrounding spaces and settings in the city and the landscape. By focusing on questions of technique and practice on the one hand, and on the formal and aesthetic qualities of photographs on the other, it opens up new ways of looking at and thinking about architecture and about how we relate to our cities and landscape. Beautifully illustrated with photographs mostly, but not exclusively, from America, the book follows a chronological order, spanning from the early decades of the 20th century to the present. Within this overarching structure, there is a division into three sections, with the first section looking at the photographic depiction of buildings, the second section dealing with the city, and the third extending into landscapes and larger territories.