Darker Than Blue - The Eye Behind the Camera
Indujah Srikaran & Nilesh Patel
Early travellers and explorers used sketches, watercolours, and prints to record, illustrate, and share their work. In the early nineteenth century, with the development of cameras and permanent images, travellers and explorers turned to photography.
Architectural history has been closely tied to architectural photography ever since. The subjects, locations, and dates of architectural photographs are well documented however it is rarely asked, who had the equipment, the access, and the networks? Who were the tastemakers? Who has shaped architectural history through images?
This piece is part of the Race+Ethnicity Network blog post series.
Maxime Du Camp’s photograph of Hadji-Ishmael standing amongst the temple ruins in a loin cloth (1849-50).
Source: Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005 (2005.100.376.40).
When Maxime Du Camp, a French writer and photographer, journeyed through Egypt and the Middle East with the novelist, Gustave Flaubert, between 1849-51, he became the first to produce a photographic travel publication of his voyages. The book Égypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie featured some of the first photographic surveys of monuments and ancient architectural sites, presented as French ‘discoveries’. Some of his images included his servant, Hadji-Ishmael, in a loincloth among the ruins; highlighting that the ancient sites and ‘natives’ were disconnected from the modern world and in need of scientific observation. Less than a century later, between 1922-32, Harry Burton photographed the excavation of Tutankhamun’s Tomb using the latest photographic techniques. Maxime Du Camp and Harry Burton had access to new cameras and the time and means to travel for long periods. They were privileged to experience and record these spectacular sites during a time of Egyptomania. These Caucasian male explorers and their photographers laid the foundations of professional architectural photography, particularly for western consumption via monographs, postcards, magazines, television, and cinema.
During the twentieth century, the relationship between photography and architecture became stronger. Leading mid-century photographers, such as Ben Schnall (1906-98), Julius Shulman (1910-2006), Ezra Stoller (1915-2004), George Cserna (1919-2003), Hedrich-Blessing (1929–79), and Lucien Hervé (1910-2007), demonstrated photography’s unique ability to capture light, shadows, geometry, and new angles whilst also composing and capturing ‘Western’ ideals of aesthetics and ‘good’ taste.
Maxime Du Camp’s assistant perched on top of a sculpture of Ramses II for scale (1850)
Source: Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005 (2005.100.376.149)
Two figures with untypical backgrounds were Leland Y. Lee (1918-2016), whose father was a Chinese immigrant and tailor, specialising in brightly coloured silk shirts, and Pedro E. Guerrero (1917-2012), who attended Mexican only segregated schools in Arizona and whose father was a sign painter. Lee studied and worked with leading architectural photographer Julius Shulman for eight years before going solo in 1961. He has captured designs by many prominent twentieth century architects, such as the dramatic Elrod House designed by John Lautner, which has appeared in many publications and the James Bond film ‘Diamonds Are Forever’. Between 1939-59, Guerrero formed a close bond with architect Frank Lloyd Wright, to create a distinct, recognisable style for Wright’s legacy. His relationship with Wright from the age of 22 enabled him to travel and work for magazines such as House and Garden, House Beautiful, Harper’s Bazaar, and Architectural Forum. He also photographed for Philip Johnson and Marcel Breuer. Few photographers of colour have matched the careers of Lee and Guerrero.
The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) was founded in Hollywood in 1919. Ernest Dickerson ASC has photographed many of film director Spike Lee’s films and was the first black cinematographer, who was invited to join the ASC in 1990. Moreover, The British Society of Cinematographers was founded in 1949 and had two non-white members by 2020. Two contemporary British figures whose architectural images are worth noting are the Oscar and Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen and Royal Academician and winner of the Artes Mundi prize John Akomfrah. McQueen’s debut feature ‘Hunger’ included images of H block prisons in Belfast and ‘Widows’ from 2018 featured the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive apartment block in Chicago by Mies van der Rohe. John Akomfrah made ‘Handsworth Songs’ in 1986 with the Black Audio Film Collective. This documentary was a formative cultural response to social unrest in Birmingham and London in October 1985 and a portrait of British urbanism.
Discussions about diversity and the built environment include architecture, engineering, surveying and construction but usually exclude PR, journalism, and photography. After being commissioned by public relations executives or partners and directors at architectural offices, architectural photographers often visit new projects before the public, owners, or occupants and can capture pure spaces with untouched materials and surfaces. They have opportunities to experience new architecture in a way that office-based architects producing technical information might not.
Architectural history is taught almost exclusively with imagery by Caucasian photographers. The Robert Elwall Photographs Collection, the largest collection of architectural photography in the world, is held at the RIBA but the lack of diversity amongst photographers may not have been considered. The RIBA has recently published the Stirling Prize nominees however it is unlikely that any shortlisted project has been photographed by a person of colour for a leading journal, website, newspaper or tv station since the awards began 25 years ago. The late Stephen Lawrence wanted to be an architect. One of the oldest architectural journals in the UK had never published an image by a photographer of colour by 2021. Despite the many challenges architects of colour face was this still a more realistic ambition than trying to become an architectural photographer?
Further Viewing
Lee, Spike, Do The Right Thing, United States: 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, Spike Lee, 1989
McQueen, Steve, Small Axe, United Kingdom: BBC, BBC Film & Turbine Studios, 2020.
Wright, Joe, Pride & Prejudice, United Kingdom: Universal Pictures, Focus Features, Working Title Films, StudioCanal & Scion Films, 2005.
Further Reading
Cheng, Irene, Charles L. Davis, and Mabel O. Wilson, Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020.
Guerrero, Pedro E. A Photographer's Journey with Frank Lloyd Wright, Alexander Calder, and Louise Nevelson, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007.
Sealy, Mark, and Katharine Harris, Decolonising the Camera, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2019
Indujah Srikaran is a Part II Architectural Assistant and writer working in Warwickshire, with a BA (hons) in Architecture and MArch degree from De Montfort University. Indujah is interested in social mobility, racial and gender inequalities, and pedagogical methods within the built environment and has part-time experience in teaching architecture and writing for the RIBAJ.
Nilesh Patel RIBA is an Architect and filmmaker who has also worked in landscape architecture. He studied at the Birmingham School of Architecture.
