architectural photography

Ward Roberts’ pastel-hued Courts series is the culmination of a four-year effort that took him around the world to photograph empty sporting courts and fields. Roberts travelled to major cities such as Hong Kong, London, New York and Melbourne, in order to document these urban courts which manage to be uplifting while also being completely devoid of life and people.

Roberts is based in Melbourne and is represented by The Cat Street Gallery in Hong Kong. Courts is being published by Erm Books and the launch party is August 23, 2012 at the Micro-Library in Melbourne.

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Markel Redondo is a photographer based between Bilbao (Spain) and Bayonne (France) from where he covers stories in all of Spain and South West France. Spanorama, Building Spain’s Ruins deals with the Spanish economic crisis and failed real estate market. Redondo writes:

‘Spain is one of the countries hardest hit by the European economic crisis. Thanks to a highly unstable financial and real estate market, an estimated 1.2 million new empty houses litter the landscape, affecting a large majority of the population. In parallel, unemployment figures are growing to such an extent that in some areas, especially in the south, cities are experiencing unemployment rates as high as 40%.’

Kim Holtermand is a freelance architectural and landscape photographer from Denmark. In addition to his burgoing career in photography which only began a few years ago, Holtermand’s day job has him working as a fingerprints expert in the Crime Scene Unit of The Danish National Police.

This work was selected from a few different series of which fog is an ongoing theme.

This post was contributed by photographer Andi Vollmer.

From 2006-2009, Los Angeles based photographer James Welling photographed Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, CT, with color filters placed between the camera and the structure. The work was shown in galleries internationally and “Glass House” was published in 2011 by Damiani Editore. Welling writes:

‘I’ve been using the word “filter” as a noun but it’s also a verb. A filter lets some wavelengths of light through and certain kinds of information to seep in. In addition to plastic, colored filters, I introduced clear glass, clear plastic, fogged plastic, pieces of glass that were slightly uneven and tinted, and finally a diffraction filter that breaks light into the spectrum.

‘Although the Glass House is symmetrical (the front is the same as the back), I prefer a frontal view because you can see through the house to the landscape directly west. This is the aspect of the house that is perhaps most fascinating to me. This big glass box, plunked down in the Connecticut landscape, seems like a conceptual sculpture, a gigantic lens in the landscape. When I realized I could make the glass red or add reflections to the face of this supposedly transparent house, my project became a laboratory for ideas about transparency, reflectivity, and color.’

via minimal exposition

Leon West is a South Wales photographer with a wistful heart and a passion for detail. Creating intricate landscapes with an 8×10 Deardorff field camera, he composes visceral images with an ephemeral beauty. A quality ever present in Southernmost, an exploration of the most Southerly point of Wales.

This post was contributed by photographer Teresa LoJacono.

Erin Fitzsimmons photographs urban and rural landscapes and also works commercially in architectural photography. Shanghai Nights was shot in 2011 and focuses on the demise of the old Shanghai. Fitzsimmons writes:

Shanghai is the epitome of the dichotomy which is China, an ancient place which is thrusting itself into the future while seemingly discarding the past with disregard. Old Shanghai is a shattered version of its former self, a town of wood and brick in a city of steel and concrete. This creates a place which seems to bring about its own death, but whispers of charm and beauty can still be heard at night in narrow streets and alleys.

Raissa Venables is a graduate from the School of Visual Arts in New York with a Masters of Professional Studies in Digital Photography. These photographs are from her Public Spaces and Private Spaces galleries. Venables writes:

‘I want to convey a particular psychological experience of the rooms I choose to photograph. My goal is to portray this place as a world unto itself, eroding, shape shifting and seductively shiny.’

Chris Johnson is a travel photographer based out of New York City.  His latest personal project was shot while on location in Qatar along the city of Doha’s booming skyline. Using traditional zone system techniques, Johnson isolated each building by blowing the backgrounds out creating a digital file that required no masking and little adjustment. He explains:

‘I was there for work last August for a few days, and it was my first time to the Middle East. It was not as I had pictured; the local culture there is very modern. So over the next few days, whenever I had free time (and when it wasn’t 120 degrees), I just walked around the small downtown. The architecture is not terribly tall, but like New York, all the buildings are pretty close together creating the challenge.’

This post was contributed by photographer Matt Rainwaters.

Amanda Boe is a photographer based in San Francisco. These images are from her series ‘What I Hold Dear’. She writes:

These photographs are part of an ongoing series titled What I Hold Dear, which explores my relationship between my native home in South Dakota and my present life in California. After leaving the Midwest over a decade ago, I developed a deeper appreciation for the places that influenced my life and felt inspired to revisit them with my camera. Between 2009 and 2011, I made a series of trips back to South Dakota, seeking out places from my past that resonate with me. At the same time, I continued to photograph in California and found myself drawn to scenery that reminded me of the Midwest: open, isolated, and quiet.

My work depicts an intersection of two worlds: looking back at a place left behind and searching for a sense of place in another. Moving through landscapes and interior spaces, a narrative began to unfold as I retraced my journey thus far. The process of photographing between California and South Dakota allowed me to address the feeling of being distanced yet emotionally attached to a place I once knew so well. What remains within me, and what I hold dear, is an innate longing for the familiar feeling of home.

This post was contributed by photographer David Welch.