ABSTRACT

In previous chapters on the work of Warren & Mosley and Andrew Mead the question of architectural photography is raised within the analysis of articles about art and landscape in the British journal The Architects’ Journal. In this chapter, I turn to address examples of architectural photography within the international architectural press, in the Spanish journal El Croquis and the Japanese journal Architecture and Urbanism (A+U). Here, I will further explore the implications of the field of architectural photography as a genre of photographic realism with specific compositional traits, acting as the dominant ‘support’ for the institutional and ideological terms of architecture’s presentation within its media. However, the main purpose of the chapter is to reveal, through the close observation of a specific practice of architectural photography, levels of complexity and reflexivity within the image, through the identification of generic variations, significant modifications to the compositional norms of architectural photography.