GARETH GARDNER: DOUBLE VISION
Exhibition as part of Clerkenwell Design Week.
23-25 May 2023, 10am–5pm
TOTO Concept Gallery
140 St John Street
London EC1V 4UA
What makes a good architectural photograph? There’s no objective answer, especially in this post-truth age of Photoshop, AI images and photo-real visualisations.
DOUBLE VISION presents a selection of recent photographs by architectural photographer Gareth Gardner. They each sit somewhere on the scale between meticulously staged photography and spontaneous reportage.
Many factors affect the innate ‘quality’ of an architectural photograph. Is it the photographer’s job to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, or to accurately document a scene as presented? What is the angle of view – both literally and figuratively?
The answer often depends on who is commissioning the photography – an architect might want their project shown in its best light while an editorial publication could favour a journalistic approach. Architectural photography also occupies both commercial and fine art spheres, where hyper-real perfection co-exists with documentation of the banal.
DOUBLE VISION invites viewers to ponder these contradictions. How do the languages of artifice and reality translate together to make an image? What is the motivation behind a photograph, what truths are being told or ‘alternative facts’ fabricated? These questions have been debated since the dawn of photography in the 1820s, when the first images captured were of architecture.
Large-format prints will be displayed alongside a specially-commissioned film featuring the input of leading industry figures including artist Adam Nathaniel Furman, FX editor Theresa Dowling and Pippa Nissen, director Nissen Richards Studio.
