Andrew Shenouda skilled as an architect sooner than he ever picked up a digital camera professionally, and it presentations in each body. Born in Cairo in 1988, he now shoots architectural pictures for practices most of the people handiest know from mag credit. Gerber Architekten. Bollinger + Grohmann. John Robertson Architects. His portfolio additionally covers constructions designed by means of MVRDV, Zaha Hadid Architects, Snohetta, Archea Associati, and 51N4E.
He has received the Structure MasterPrize 3 times in two years. He has additionally picked up an honorable point out on the PX3 Prix de los angeles Photographie. His pictures have run all over from ArchDaily to Wikipedia.
We spoke with Andrew about photographing people’s constructions. We mentioned documenting towns which are nonetheless underneath building, and about what the traditional stuff nonetheless teaches him.
From Structure Faculty to Architectural Images
Andrew, take us again to the beginning. You studied structure on the Arab Academy in Cairo, then taught your self pictures. Someday the digital camera obviously received. When did you understand you may reasonably {photograph} constructions than design them?
I wouldn’t say the digital camera changed structure. In some ways, structure was the root of my pictures.
From the very starting of my research, we have been taught the visible rules of structure. Point of view. Gentle and shadow. Drawings that display a undertaking in 2D. We additionally studied architectural historical past and principle, and that revealed me to quite a lot of architectural pictures on platforms like 500px.
Images regularly was some other type of visible find out about for me. It led me to discover other ways and alternative ways of deciphering structure during the digital camera.
Studying a Development the Approach Its Architect Did
Being an architect who images structure is an actual merit and perhaps a curse. You’ll be able to learn a development the way in which its fashion designer learn it. That suggests you’ll additionally see the place it didn’t rather come off. How a lot of your process is appearing the design as meant?
I might by no means name it a curse. I’d name it a problem.
My means is to learn and analyze a undertaking by means of figuring out its design intent. That suggests having a look at its paperwork, its spatial revel in, its fabrics and its design options. Even if the constructed end result differs from the drawings or renders, the core design concept is most often nonetheless there.
Taking pictures for 3 Shoppers on One Activity
On a unmarried undertaking, the architect, the developer, and the contractor all desire a other image of the similar development. One needs the speculation. Some other needs the asset. A 3rd needs the workmanship. How do you fulfill all 3 in a single shoot, and who wins when you can not?
It is determined by the connection and settlement between the other events concerned within the undertaking.
In lots of circumstances, the architect, developer, and contractor will every use the general images in a different way. So an important factor is figuring out what every one wishes from the shoot. There’s most often numerous overlap between the ones wishes. However I nonetheless attempt to construct sufficient selection into the general set to hide everybody.
What the Awards Are In reality Judging
You will have received the Structure MasterPrize 3 times since 2024 and brought an honorable point out at PX3. Festival paintings and shopper paintings aren’t the similar animal. Do the award pictures pop out of commissions? Or do you shoot in a different way when no person is paying you?
It varies. Award pictures don’t essentially come from commissioned paintings, and I don’t truly shoot in a different way with out a shopper.
I merely reply to what catches my eye within the structure, whether or not that’s a kind, a element, a spatial dating, or a top quality of sunshine.
Photographing Towns That Don’t Exist But
A large number of your portfolio is towns in the midst of turning into themselves. New Alamein emerging out of the desolate tract. King Abdullah Street. Downtown Tirana. Photographing a spot sooner than it’s completed is nearer to reportage than to promoting. What’s it like documenting someplace that doesn’t correctly exist but?
Every position is other.
New Alamein felt like a brand new skyline rising from its coastal panorama. King Abdullah Street is other. That one is set reshaping an current city surroundings via greenery, panorama, sculptural landmarks, and water options. Downtown Tirana is other once more. It’s a longtime town, reworking from a in large part post-socialist city material right into a denser recent capital. New towers and the world over designed tasks are reshaping its skyline and its id.
Looking ahead to Blue Hour
Gentle is the only factor on a shoot day you can not agenda, and also you obviously love the blue hour. How a lot of a fee is spent merely ready? And the way do you provide an explanation for to a shopper that the development may not be able to be photographed till 8 within the night time?
Prior to each shoot, I find out about the elements forecast, solar course, development orientation, and surrounding context. I most often do that with the assistance of format plans, renders, and even cellular reference photographs.
Right through the day, I observe the converting mild and shadows to search out the most efficient attitude on every facade. I additionally use that point to determine the most efficient mild for the internal areas, if I would like it. By the point blue hour arrives, I already know precisely the place I wish to be.
What Two Thousand Years of Structure Teaches Him
Between the towers and the lodge interiors, there’s Kalabsha Temple, the Maiden Tower in Baku, and the Palais Garnier. Structures that experience already outlived everybody who argued about them. What does photographing one thing two thousand years previous do to the way in which you {photograph} one thing that opened ultimate month?
Ancient structure, for me, is strongly hooked up to id and position. A lot of recent structure these days follows a extra world language as an alternative.
Photographing each turns into a type of visible find out about. I’m all the time inspecting how shape, main points, fabrics, and lines specific the duration and id of a development.
Up within the Air Over Riyadh and Paris
The drone rewrote architectural pictures in about 5 years, and your aerials of Riyadh and Paris display you took to it. What did going up within the air provide you with? And is there the rest about running from the bottom that has quietly been misplaced?
The Riyadh aerials have been photographed from a helicopter in 2014. The Paris pictures have been taken from increased viewpoints like Sacré-Cœur and the Eiffel Tower.
What I in finding particularly fascinating about photographing from above is that I begin to construct a psychological map of town. I will see how roads intersect. I will see how districts attach and the place a development sits throughout the greater city construction. Once I go back to floor degree, I’ve a far clearer sense of the place I’m.
Drones give extra keep watch over and velocity. A certified digital camera from a helicopter provides higher flexibility in focal period and composition. What the bottom provides you with, and top can’t, is scale and subject matter. From the air, a development seems the way in which a 1:50 style seems on a table. On foot, it’s one thing you means and stroll round. You get the context, and also you get the spatial revel in. Each are important, however they provide you with very various things.
Does the Activity Make Him a Worse Vacationer?
When you find yourself off the clock and easily strolling via a town, are you able to in reality take a look at a development, or are you all the time framing it? Has the process made you a worse vacationer?
I in reality experience my tourism revel in via my lens, finding the tradition, structure, surroundings, and panorama, and expressing my revel in via pictures.
So I wouldn’t say the process has made me a worse vacationer. If the rest, it encourages me to go back and forth and uncover the arena.
What Comes Subsequent
Andrew, thanks for this. To complete, are there any tasks or shoots at the horizon that you simply wish to level our readers towards?
I’ve a couple of upcoming architectural shoots in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The ones will duvet residential, business, and cultural tasks. I’m additionally making plans to proportion extra paintings from my fresh shuttle to Azerbaijan.
See Extra of Andrew Shenouda’s Paintings
To peer extra of Andrew’s architectural pictures, talk over with his 500px Profile, see his commissioned tasks at andrewshenouda.com, and observe him on Instagram at @andrew_shenouda.