The Artistry of the Built Environment;

Architectural Photography of Bob Swanson

Artists are, at least in a personal sense, whatever their medium, are storytellers. Every home, office, garage, city park, power plant… even the streets you walk, the barn you admire or the garden you love to work in, have a story. The architectural photographer gets to tell that story in oh so many ways. The story can be as simple as the graphical way the built space looks with a certain light on it. It could be the way it works against the sky or its neighboring buildings or environment, but mostly it lies in how it is used and what purposes it may serve.

After more than four decades of building and photographing them, I have captured the stories in imagery of so many constructions, from places of worship, to offices, from homes to historic landmarks, from laboratories to parks and city landscapes and so much more. In this exhibition I will be showing a wide variety of the various types of architectural photography, and bits and pieces of the stories of these constructions. The images will, hopefully, show architecture and design of the built environment as the truly fine art that it is.

Yes, there is a necessary commercial aspect to this kind of work. But, in the end, the collaboration between photographer, architect, consultant, art director, contractor and owner engages the photographer to communicate the essence of the built environment to increase a greater understanding of it and to provide the esthetic understanding of its intrinsic beauty. Thus, creating a representation of the essence of all of the hard work and creative effort put in by those who designed and constructed it.

For years, I have had to deal with the idea that architectural photography is more a technical and commercial endeavor and is not a fine art. Not so much by statements to that effect, but more by the sense of a lack of understanding of what the viewers are actually seeing. I think it comes from the nature of the built space in our everyday lives. Buildings and structures are so common place that their mundaneness colors our view of the artistic rendition of it. My goal here is to show the ordinary in a new light and to peak a new awareness of the meaning of the lines and the light, the graphic relationships and the implications of use of any given space. In short, to tell a story, as only art can, of what the space is about.

Bob Swanson

All photographs on this site are ©2017 Bob Swanson

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Bob can be reached at:    bob@swansonimages.com

PO 26, Weed, CA 96094

530 938-0600/ 415 515-7460