10 of the best architectural photography series for World Photo Day
It's World Photo Day! To celebrate, we've rounded up 10 of the most popular recent photo essays on Dezeen, including Modernist Palm Springs houses shot by moonlight and Lego models of Brutalist buildings.
Midnight Modernism by Tom Blachford
Australian photographer Tom Blachford's long-exposure shots for his Midnight Modern series depict mid-20th-century houses in Palm Springs after their residents have gone to bed.
He selected houses with no obvious modern additions to create images that look like they could have been taken 70 years ago when the buildings were still new. Read more about Midnight Modernism »
Syntax of cities by Sebastian Weiss
Weiss uses Instagram under the pseudonym Le Blanc to capture details of buildings he finds all around Europe.
Through his work, the photographer aims to abstract the architecture from its context, and believes his images are representative of a new kind of architectural photography that has emerged because of the popularity of the social media platform. Read more about Syntax of Cities »
Modern architecture in Turkey by Yener Torun
Turkish photographer Yener Torun also uses Instagram as his medium, documenting architecture in Istanbul and other cities in Turkey that features bold shapes, vibrant hues and patterned facades.
Through his work, he hopes to reveal that there is more to Turkey than opulent mosques and old streets. Read more about modern architecture in Turkey »
Time Slice by Richard Silver
New York photographer Richard Silver shoots well-known buildings over the course of a single sunset before slicing them up and placing them together to create a single image.
Among the buildings he has "sliced" are Herzog & de Meuron's National Stadium in Beijing, Moshe Safdie's Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore and Istanbul's Hagia Sophia basilica. Read more about Time Slice »
Down the Long Driveway by Mary Gaudin
Following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, which severely damaged New Zealand's second-largest city, Mary Gaudin was struck by how many notable Modernist houses had been destroyed.
With no records left of these buildings, she embarked on a project to capture those that remain and created a series of images documenting mid-century residential architecture in New Zealand. Read more about Down the Long Driveway »
Modern Forms by Nicolas Grospierre
Swiss photographer Nicolas Grospierre refers to himself as an "obsessive collector" of Modernist architecture, and has spent the last 15 years documenting buildings across five continents.
In his exclusive essay for Dezeen, the Warsaw-based photographer discussed how his images of the movement's now dilapidated concrete-formed churches, Soviet housing estates and various saucer-shaped structures show its failure. Read more about Modern Forms »
Flaine by Alastair Philip Wiper
Photographer Alastair Philip Wiper travelled to Flaine, the Marcel Breuer-designed Modernist ski resort in the French Alps, to find out why it had such a bad reputation.
According to Wiper, the concrete hotels and public buildings didn't go down well with visitors looking for more traditional Alpine cabins, and in his photo essay, the photographer explained why he believes that the recent surge of interest in Modernism and Brutalism could help restore Breuer's vision for Flaine. Read more about Flaine »
Defensive Structures in the British Landscape by Richard Brine
For his Defensive Structures series, Richard Brine documented the pillboxes along Britain's coastline left over from the Second World War.
Pillboxes, or field defences, were installed between 1940 and 1941 when the country was on the brink of invasion by Germany. They gained their nickname because of their cylindrical and hexagonal shapes. Read more about Defensive Structures in the British Landscape »
Missing Buildings by Thom and Beth Atkinson
Brother and sister Thom and Beth Atkinson documented sites across London where traces of Second World War bomb damage are still visible.
A mix of empty spaces and piecemeal development on sites bombed by Nazi Germany during the Blitz are included in the Missing Building series, which is described by the pair as "a strange kind of archeology". Read more about Missing Buildings »
Lego_tonic by Arndt Schlaudraff
Schlaudraff fills his Instagram account with intricate Lego models of Brutalist and Modernist buildings – an idea he had following a visit to The Bauhaus art school in Dessau, Germany.
Although he finds the characteristically boxy forms of Brutalist and Modernist styles particularly suitable for Lego construction, he has also recreated iconic landmarks including the Eiffel Tower and the UC Innovation Center by Pritzker Prize winner Alejandro Aravena.