Negotiating the Status of Architectural Photographs

Abstract

This article investigates the role architecture has assigned to architectural photographs and the protocols regulating their use through close readings of the correspondence between architects, authors, editors, publishers and photographers. The article thereby traces how, in the first half of the twentieth century, architecture came to appreciate photographs as artifacts with individual qualities, but resisted recognizing their independent agency. It suggests that this act of circumvention was legitimized by disciplinary protocols and has led to a discrepancy between the role assigned to photographs by architecture and their actual role in the production of architectural meaning.