Week 7 - Project Development Notes*

Inspirational Architectural Photographers

To acquire some more inspiration to one of the fields of photography my project's theme incorporated, I thought it would be beneficial to look at the works of professional architectural and landscape photographers. Here are the notes from the research I carried out:

Dirk Bakker - Macenzo Photography

Dirk Bakker a.k.a @macenzo on Instagram is a photographer living in Amsterdam the Netherlands. 

From simply beautiful pieces of pavement to mind-blowing staircases, from eye-pleasing facades to majestic bridges, Dirk Bakker presents the viewer with the beauty of our everyday surroundings. 

He often uses the power of repetition to create a rhythm pleasant to the eye. “I see a big connection between architecture and graphic design. It’s all about shapes, form, layout and patterns as well as constructing things, putting things together. The way I view and shoot the world is strongly influenced by this love.” 

Dirk’s pictures take more than just a unique eye for patterns, textures, and lines – they also take time and patience to find a perfect perspective. “Sometimes the first shot is the best,’ says Dirk. ‘And sometimes I really need to take a lot to find a usable one. Some subjects can also be used several times, e.g. a close up, a straight up or far away shot – all this gives a different result.”

As a true Dutchman, Dirk enjoys “photo-cycling” not only in his hometown of Amsterdam and many different cities and countries that he is invited to visit, but also for his SeeMyCity projects (a travel-photography initiative that he helped to co-found, which is based on advanced and creative mobile photography and social media.)

His work has been featured on many websites around the world, such as Archilovers, Architizer, Worldphoto, Businessinsider, Huffingtonpost and ArchDaily. 

You can find him on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Having a total social media reach of over 375.000 followers with strong engagement he is one of the main social media influencers in the Netherlands and highly ranked worldwide. http://instagram.com/macenzo

Sources:

1. https://www.facebook.com/pg/macenzo.photography/about/?ref=page_internal

2. http://www.boredpanda.com/architecture-photography-perfect-pattern-symmetry-dirk-bakker/

3. http://hayo.co/of-shapes-and-patterns-dirk-bakkers-symmetrical-photography/

Andreas Gursky

Born in 1955 in Leipzig, Germany.

Gursky studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie in the early 1980s and first adopted a style and method closely following Becher’s systematic approach to photography, creating small, black-and-white prints. In the early 1980s, however, he broke from this tradition, using colour film and spontaneous observation to make a series of images of people at leisure, such as hikers, swimmers and skiers, depicted as tiny protagonists in a vast landscape.

Since the 1990s, Gursky has concentrated on sites of commerce and tourism, making work that draws attention to today’s burgeoning high-tech industry and global markets. His imagery ranges from the vast, anonymous architecture of modern day hotel lobbies, apartment buildings and warehouses to stock exchanges and parliaments in places from as far a field as Shanghai, Brasília, Los Angeles and Hong Kong.

Gursky's work is characterised by the tension between the clarity and formal nature of his photographs and the ambiguous intent and meaning they present, occasioned by their insertion into a ‘high-art' environment. Through all his work runs a sense of impersonality, a depiction of the structures and patterns of collective existence, often represented by the unitary behaviour of large crowds. 

Most of Gursky's photos come in editions of six with two artist's proofs. As of end 2011, Gursky holds a new record for highest price paid at auction for a single photographic image. His print Rhein II sold for USD $4,338,500 at Christie's, New York on 8 November 2011

Sources:

1. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/andreas-gursky-2349

2. http://whitecube.com/artists/andreas_gursky/

3. Maev Kennedy (11 November 2011). "Andreas Gursky's Rhine II photograph sells for $4.3m". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 November 2016.