Gallery: 17 of the Most Influential Architecture Photos of All Time
Photo: Bas Princen0120. Bas Princen, Cooling plant, Dubai, 2009
A new book, *Shooting Space: Architecture in Contemporary Photography*, and a corresponding exhibit at the Barbican in London celebrate the relationship between architecture and photography. Before he was a photographer, Bas Princen was an architect. He lives in Rotterdam but documents brutalist, monolithic industrial sites everywhere, like this Dubai cooling plant.
Photo: Berenice Abbott02New York ightview
The book and exhibit start with Berenice Abbott’s images from *Changing New York*, which she took for the Depression-era, government-backed Federal Art Project.
Photo: Berenice Abbott03R
The images document the newly minted skyscrapers and high rise buildings that were quickly turning New York City into a new metropolis.
Photo: Lucien Hervé047. Lucien Herve, High Court of Justice, Chandigarh, 1955
The Hungarian photographer Lucein Hervé was more than Le Corbusier's official photographer; he became his design partner. Hervé's dozens of high-contrast, closely-cropped photos gave Le Corbusier's buildings the cinematic look the architect endeavored to create.
Photo: Lucien Hervé05i
Le Corbusier famously told Hervé he “had the soul of an architect.”
Photo: Iwan Baan061. Iwan Baan, Torre David #2, 2011
Iwan Baan is one of the modern critics. His photographs of the 45-story high "Tower of David" in Caracas, Venezuela, reveal a subculture of squatters.
Photo: Iwan Baan072. Iwan Baan, Torre David #10, 2011
The building was originally designed as a glitzy office building, but was later abandoned when the developer died. Now it's a slum housing hundreds of families. To many it's a symbol of a failed banking enterprise turned into a living city.
Photo: Iwan Baan0816. Iwan Baan, Torre David #1, 2011
Residents have built homes, gyms, churches, basketball courts, and stores inside the Torre David. This fascinates Baan, whose work documents the unexpected ways humans interact with the built environment.
Photo: Nadav Kander099. Nadav Kander, Chongqing IV (Sunday Picnic), Chongqing Municipality, 2006
Another contemporary photographer featured is Nadav Kander. Here, the London-based artist captures the people who've adapted infrastructure around the Yangtze River in China into a home.
Photo: Nadav Kander1010. Nadav Kander, Chongqing XI, Chongqing Municipality, 2007
More people live along the Yangtze than in the United States. Economic development, like the kind featured in Kander's work, threatens that lifestyle.
Photo: Bernd and Hilla Becher1123. Bernd & Hilla Becher, Lessines, 2010
German husband-and-wife duo Bernd and Hilla Becher documented the industrial architecture in Western Europe. Their work created an archive of the proliferation of buildings that sprang up between the World Wars, and inspired subsequent photographers...
Photo: Thomas Struth1219. Thomas Struth, Clinton Road, London, 1997
...like Thomas Struth. The German photographer works in black and white and has shot everything from skyscrapers to theme parks to deserted streets, like this one in London in 1977.
Photo: Hiroshi Sugimoto13906-2, 6/7/02, 9:25 AM, 8G, 4416x5412 (5+365), 75%, Bulfinch/Mo
The photography-architecture relationship can be powerful for no other reason than documentation, plain and simple. Here, Hiroshi Sugimoto's ghostly 1997 shot of the Twin Towers in New York.
Photo: Bas Princen1421. Bas Princen, 'Mokattam ridge' (garbage recycling city), 2009
Another Bas Princen shot, this time of Mokattam Ridge, a neighborhood in Cairo made out of garbage.
Photo: Simon Norfolk15F
Simon Norfolk captures sites of modern warfare, in more color than would be normally expected. Here, an out-of-use Soviet-era palace in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Simon Norfolk16Burke + Norfolk
As Norfolk sees it, anyone interested in war is interested in the ruined architecture left behind. Here, a security guard booth in Herat, Afghanistan.
1727. Ed Ruscha, Dodgers Stadium, 1000 Elysian Park Ave, 1967-1999
American pop artist Ed Ruscha (creator of the famous "OOF" painting) paid close attention to commercialization, and therefore, structures like gas stations, street signs, and billboards. Here, his photograph of Dodgers Stadium.
