Architectural photography and the construction of modern architecture

Architecture has provided primary subject-matter throughout the history of photography.1 Since the mid-1920s, numerous art photographers have been commissioned to photograph architecture for consumer and architectural magazines: Margaret Bourke-White, well known for her stylized photographs of machinery for Fortune magazine in the mid-1930s, began her career as an architectural photographer. Her first published photographs appeared in House & Garden in 1928.2 Many images in Henry-Russell Hitchcock's definitive 1936 book The Architecture of H. H. Richardson and His Times, were taken by the photographer Berenice Abbott.3 The classic 1930s photographs of Mart Starn's architecture in Frankfurt, Germany, were taken by Use Bing at the beginning of her career.4 Cologne photographer August Sander also received architectural assignments, although he is best known for his portraiture.5 These photographers and others helped to dissolve the boundaries of architectural photography, creating artistic compositions as well as straightforward documentary images.