NZPhotographer Issue 25, November 2019

Ihave learnt to respect architecture. The
domineering socialist structures of my birth city were
an important component of the socio-economic
milieu which shaped my personality, including my
visual perception. I spent my childhood in a maze of
neatly aligned concrete buildings, which epitomized Le
Corbusier’s description of urban edifices as ‘machines
for living in’. For better or worse, the overbearing
masculine geometry of the place fostered my acute
curiosity for man-made landscapes.
Moving to New Zealand and leaving the ideological
Shangri-La behind, refocused my attention on the
living spaces that are smaller and emotionally easier to
approach. While large crumbling buildings symbolise
the erosion of power, the decay of civilization as a
whole, empty family homes bring the same message in
a more evocative and deliberate fashion.
There is an undeniable truth written on the faces of old
walls by the abrasive hand of time, left there to serve
as symbolic signposts on our epic, one way trip towards
the rendezvous with mortality. If architecture is ‘frozen
music’, as Goethe put it, doomed dwellings have to be
heartbreakingly sad, solo violin pieces.
ARCHITECTURE IS LANDSCAPE
It is a man-made one, but a landscape nevertheless.
From a technical point of view, it means that you
will rely mostly on your wide angle lens and make
apertures between f8 and f16 your best friends, giving
your subject a substantial depth of field. If your tripod is
handy, it will help to keep the ISO setting at a minimum.
The electronics within your camera will take care of
the shutter, and if it has any problems with doing it
correctly, the exposure compensation dial is there to
the rescue.
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NZPhotographer