The Space of the Photograph

Abstract

This paper discusses critically the notions of ‘space’ and ‘representation’, both essential elements of the architectural photograph. The analysis is underpinned by the notion, first championed by the philosopher Henri Lefebvre, that space is produced and not merely found. It asks the question of what type of space do photographs produce when their subject is architecture, architectural photography being the genre par excellence concerned with the representation of space. The paper proposes to discuss this question in relation to the space of the office, arguing that this is a defining space of modernity and which is far from disappearing. Through the exam of photographs of offices by Ezra Stoller, Jacqueline Hassink and Lynne Cohen, the paper proposes a critique of the objective mode characteristic of architectural photography, offering a detailed analysis of the visual codes through which it produces its meanings and arguing that it is profoundly implicated in the production of corporate and, by extension, capitalist space.