Camera Constructs ─ Photography, Architecture and the Modern City

Photography and architecture share a unique synergy. Throughout its history, photography has taken architecture as the subject matter for some of its most compelling imagery, while the medium has profoundly influenced how architecture is represented, imagined and produced. Camera Constructs is the first book to reflect critically on the different practices by which photographers, artists, architects, theorists and historians engage with the relationship of the camera to architecture, the city and the evolution of Modernism. The title on the one hand suggests an opposition between the immaterial quality of photography and the materiality of construction, but on the other can be read as saying that the camera invariably constructs what it depicts: the photograph is not a simple representation of an external reality, but constructs its own meanings and reconstructs its subjects. Twenty-three essays by a wide range of historians and theorists are grouped under the themes of a€?Modernism and the Published Photographa€?, a€?Architecture and the City Re-imagineda€?, a€?Interpretative Constructsa€? and a€?Photography in Design Practices.a€? They are preceded by an Introduction that comprehensively outlines the subject and elaborates on the diverse historical and theoretical contexts of the authorsa€? approaches. Camera Constructs provides a rich and highly original analysis of the relationship of photography to built form from the early modern period to the present day.

Andrew Higgott, the University of East London, UK. Timothy Wray is an architect, photographer and writer based in Berlin.