Graphic and Explicit; Photography, punctum and Architectural Appearance

Observing a century of relations between architecture and photography in the use of graphic, drawing and photographic practices, this paper follows some conceptual transactions between the two disciplines. Primarily, there is an essential difference however; in a given situation, photographers will seek to capture what is, whereas architects often work to formulate what can be. Over time, there has been a convergence of thinking and practice between the two disciplines, notably on the part of architects such as Neil Denari whose thinking reflects certain practices of photographers like Andreas Gursky and Jeff Wall. In examining these occurrences, it is relevant to note Roland Barthes' critical insight of the binary pair he called the studium and punctum to visualize a cohesive overall background coupled with a specific element occurring in photography, and by inference, in architecture, especially at the conceptual and representational moment.