All images by Taylor Luo. Used with Creative Commons permission.
The abstract treatment is an obvious and common approach to architectural photography, given the interesting shapes, lines, and patterns architecture creates. In one of his recent sets, Los Angeles-based Taylor Luo combines photography, digital art, and a touch of abstract to re-imagine some architectural elements with an “order” that emphasizes their form.
“The Subversion, The Reformation,” Taylor simply wrote in his description for Order, a set of black and white photographs of some curious-looking buildings. Heavily angular and geometric, they look clean, crisp, and futuristic in this minimalist style. The attention to detail to make every line, angle, and shape stand out is particularly noteworthy here, and what most of us would say is the stand-out feature of this body of work.
But, what could his enigmatic description be pointing out? It’s hard to say, but a wild guess about the “subversion” part would be a reference to the entire look and feel of the photos. As with Daniel Garay Arango’s zero-gravity inspired architectural imagery, Taylor’s works look more like digital illustrations than photographs with the way they were edited. Some may frown upon this kind of approach to photography, yet Taylor took the risk to realize his vision.
As for the “reformation,” the closest interpretation would be Taylor’s approach of breaking down the buildings into interesting lines and patterns instead of the buildings in their entirety. Both add a certain visual appeal that make this body of work nevertheless outstanding.
If you’re into out-of-the-box architectural photography and urban geometry studies, you may also want to check out the outstanding works of Sebastien Del Grosso, Faraz Azhar, Lars Stieger, and Ekaterina Busygina.
Do check out Taylor Luo’s Behance porfolio to see more of this photography projects.
