Image Building

This generously illustrated examination of architectural photography from the 1930s to the present shows how the medium has helped shape familiar views of iconic buildings.

Photography has both manipulated and bolstered our appreciation of modern architecture. With beautiful photographs of private and public buildings by Julius Shulman, Candida Höfer, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and others, this book examines the central and active role that photography plays in defining and perpetuating the iconic nature of buildings and places. This volume shows how different photographers represent the same building, offers commentaries on the “American dream,” and explores changes in commercial architectural photography. Placing decades-old images alongside modern ones, Image Building depicts the idea of the comfortable middle-class home and the construction of suburbia as an ironic ideal. It presents the ways that public spaces such as libraries, museums, theaters, and office buildings are experienced differently as photographers highlight the social, cultural, psychological, and aesthetic conditions to reveal the layered meanings of place and identity. Looking at how photography shapes and frames our understanding of architecture, this volume offers thought-provoking points of view through an exploration of social and cultural issues.