Photos: Iwan Baan

From the NY Times all-important Arts section, a profile of architecture photographer Iwan Baan.

“Mr. Baan’s conjuring of real life may be ideally suited to a time when architects like Mr. Koolhaas are creating buildings meant to absorb and reflect the messiness of 21st-century cities.”

Anything worthwhile in architecture today is context-rich. These photos represent something essential about the space captured, something more true to how architecture exists outside of high design magazines.

“For decades magazine editors, developers and architects themselves favored a static style of photography that framed buildings as pristine objects. Mr. Baan’s work, while still showing architecture in flattering lights and from carefully chosen angles, does away with the old feeling of chilly perfection. In its place he offers untidiness, of the kind that comes from real people moving though buildings and real cities massing around them.”

People still seem to recoil at the mention of modern architecture, in all its form-first, ego driven glory. The way modern architecture is represented in photography typically speaks volumes to a certain character of the resulting space. Compare these two photos of supposedly worthwhile spaces and decide which one you’d like to spend an hour in :

Photo: Christopher Sturman, Dwell Nov 09 Photo: Iwan Baan