The Lives of Documents: Photography as Project traces how photographers construct research, build archives, and evolve their practice — repositioning documentary photography not as passive record but as a generative mode of architectural enquiry.
About This Book
Co-curated by photographers Bas Princen and Stefano Graziani as part of a long-term project at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, this publication interrogates the contemporary role of photography in the study and practice of architecture. Rather than treating the photograph as a neutral document, it foregrounds the research materials, archiving practices, and production processes that give an image its meaning. The result is a sustained argument that documentation is not incidental to photographic practice but intrinsic to it. For architects, photographers, and researchers, it reframes how we understand the image as both evidence and instrument in thinking about the built environment.
Key Features
- 320 pages of documentary photography, archival research, and critical visual essays
- Co-curated by Bas Princen and Stefano Graziani
- Artists include Lewis Baltz, Lynne Cohen, Guido Guidi, Roni Horn, Armin Linke, Gordon Matta-Clark, Marianne Mueller, and Bruce Nauman
- Published by Canadian Centre for Architecture, ISBN 9783753305790
What You'll Discover
- How photographers use image-making as a tool for active artistic research rather than finished representation
- The role of archiving and production process in shaping how photography constructs knowledge about architecture
- How a selection of artists — spanning conceptual, documentary, and spatial practices — model our visible world through their projects
- The way photographic projects evolve as open-ended explorations rather than fixed, resolved works
About the Author
Bas Princen is a photographer whose practice engages closely with architecture and the built environment. He co-curated The Lives of Documents alongside photographer Stefano Graziani, with the project developed through their travels to better understand how artists conceive of photography as an evolving research practice.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 320
- Dimensions: 31.1 x 24.1 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783753305790
- Publisher: Canadian Centre for Architecture
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and designers with a serious interest in visual research, photography students and educators, and anyone engaged with the theory and practice of architectural documentation.