Filling the frame Marc Goodwin grew up around photography and cameras. His doctoral thesis urges architectural photography to move on from the blue and white of eternal summer. Text Marjukka Puolakka Photo Camille Kirnidis
MARC GOODWIN has been viewing the world through the lens of a camera since his childhood in London, where his father and older brother were both keen amateur photographers. Goodwin earned a BA in California, majoring in English literature and photography. After California came Barcelona, where he worked on writing novels, learning Spanish and Catalan, and largeformat, urban landscape photography. Eventually, it was time to return to London and learn more about art. Goodwin completed his Master of Arts studies at prestigious Goldsmiths, University of London. “It was there that I began to obsessively focus on architectural photography,” Goodwin says. This passion for photography then took him around the world. But then, it was time to earn a doctorate.
Away from blue and white “Before applying to Aalto University, I wrote to several people and received lengthy, detailed answers about studying in Finland. I really appreciated the time the busy professors took to help me. In London, it was more like: tick the boxes and send us a cheque.” His doctoral thesis at Aalto examined the conventions of architectural photography. His detailed study of architectural photos covered 3 493 pages of the maga-
zine Finnish Architectural Review published between 1912–2012. “Architectural photography in Finland is far too formulaic, conventional and uniform. It’s beautiful and skilful, but also standardised and placeless. Diversity is important in photography, just as in everything else in life.” Conventional architectural photography is reliant on one atmosphere: the blue and white of eternal summer. Because it is safe. The problem is that architectural photographs appear to also affect architectural design. You design things to look good in images and, if those images are all of one type, the buildings will be too.
images reflected the lived experience of autumnal Helsinki. Perhaps good architecture can also be shown in bad weather.
From weather to people
After the doctorate, it has been full steam ahead with photography. Today, Goodwin creates architectural photography with a focus on atmosphere in his company Archmospheres. “I’m shooting more than ever, with two partners and a network all around Europe. I focused on weather for the thesis because I moved north, but now it is time to put people back into the picture.” The person Goodwin definitely wants to put back in the home picture is his Grey matter wife. Considering a range of atmospheres “My wife and I have been in a longinstead of a single set of practices distance relationship for years. So the could be a way out of the impasse for conventional architectural photography. dream is to live in the same place once she finishes her studies in France. I hope “Finnish and Danish architects were really receptive to the idea of atmosphere we can together develop Archmospheres in architectural photos. However, when to show how complex and interesting it came time to buy images, they stuck to the world is.” their standard practices because no one wants to take risks in business.” Goodwin tested the viability of nonconventional atmospheres in architectural photography with students of architecture and photography. His nineMarc Goodwin 30.9.2016: month course ended in a successful Architecture’s Discursive Space: Photography exhibition called Grey Matter at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture Finnish Museum of Architecture. Its AALTO UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE 18 \ 47