Seeing the outside and inside of a building at the same time. Change over time. A life project. Architect and photographer Tom Rossiter, FAIA, will discuss his work at an exhibit of these special photographs at Primitive showroom and gallery. As Tom explains:
Architecture is a repository for cultural memory, identity, aspirations, trauma, economics, technology, language, power, preference, art, and so many more ideas.
As an architectural photographer, I have been challenged that often a single image simply cannot tell enough about the architecture to satisfy me. In a recent trip to Paris, we visited Opera Garnier, and I was struck with a bolt of an idea. At Rhode Island School of Design, while studying architecture, we were taught to render buildings in the style of the Ecole des Beaux Arts analytiques. This is a drawing that in a single page can describe a concept for an entire building, often including plans, sections, elevations, cut away sections illustrating the interior, reflected ceiling plans, etc.
In a flash, I was inspired to test this technique out photographically on Opera Garnier. To my delight, the result was powerful, and I have continued to develop the idea in this series focused on great buildings of the world. This is not an exercise in pure representation; rather, it is a riff on my experience of buildings, their history, their presence, their technology and ultimately an attempt to make an image as an offering to those who wish to experience buildings in this way
The exhibition runs September 8, 2017 through January 8, 2018.
