Positions

Positions addresses the ascent of architectural photography as a discipline, and the changing role of the architectural photographer. Once merely charged with providing a purely documentary representation of a building, the architectural photographer now offers a personal interpretation of the work of the architect, urban planner or landscape designer—what the editors of this volume term "commissioned interpretive photography," which raises the question of what "working on assignment" might mean. The common factor that unites the photographers presented here—Theo Baart, Bas Princen, Ralph Kämena, Jannes Linders, Jeroen Musch and Hans Werlemann—is that each of them has brought a highly personal perspective to bear upon their approach to their commissions, and that each of their oeuvres has had a direct impact on contemporary architecture and urban planning. Positions examines the photographer's emancipation from documentary constraint to creative agency. A "selective historiography" provides an overview of the development of architectural photography on commission, and further texts describe methods of collaboration between photographer and architect.