Co-organized with the Department of Art
This lecture considers the quandary of patronage as it operates within architecture photography. When in collaboration with architects, photographic practice can oscillate between two important impulses: clarifying architecture as an object to be communicated; and allowing the photograph to register a less stable, fictional reality. The latter does not seek to disguise the architecture, nor to displace the role of the architect, but to adjust the usual hierarchy of the architectural image, enabling the photograph to assert its own operational logic.
Drawing on recent, as-yet-unpublished work, the lecture attends to that interval between making and output when images have not yet been instrumentalized and may be encountered simply as photographs. Here, interpretation remains provisional. By unpacking photographs at this juncture, we can engage with the reflexive capacities of photography as a medium and its fractious yet attentive articulation of architecture.
Rory Gardiner (b. 1987) is an Irish-Australian photographer working primarily in Switzerland, Mexico, and Australia. He studied photography at RMIT in Melbourne before building his practice in London. His work addresses the ongoing negotiation between architecture and the photographic medium.
In 2024, Gardiner published Analogue Images (Perimeter Editions) and had a solo exhibition at C41 Gallery in Milan. He has received commissions from Tate Modern, the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Powerhouse Museum.
This lecture is free and open to the public.
This program is made possible through the generous support of the Betty R. and George F. Pierce Jr., FAIA, Fund; the William B. Coleman Jr. Colloquium Fund for Architecture; and the Wm. W. Caudill Lecture Series Fund.