Author(s): Gordon Baldwin (Curator of Photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum)

Photography

This title highlights images of architecture from Greek temples to Gothic cathedrals to modern-day skyscrapers. From the invention of photography in 1839, architecture was second only to portraiture as the most favoured subject for the camera. The fact that buildings were immobile was advantageous for the long exposures needed in the early days, but architectural images were popular for other reasons: they documented dynastic, civic, and religious achievements; educated architects about construction and decorative details; and whetted curiosity about distant lands. Arranged chronologically, this volume spans the history of the medium and includes works in a variety of photographic processes by such distinguished practitioners as Gustave Le Gray, Roger Fenton, Eugene Atget, Walker Evans, Ed Ruscha, Lewis Baltz and Michael Wesely. The seventy-five images presented here form a panoply of architectural structures and styles, from Egyptian ruins to Greek temples and Gothic cathedrals, and from skyscrapers and Modernist schools to mundane vernacular dwellings.