Agnese Sanvito is an architectural photographer based in London. This selection from her portfolio focuses on the ways colour shapes our sense of buildings.
At once unavoidable and yet also often seen as simply superficial, colour is an essential influence on our response to a building while also serving more practical functions.
These images demonstrate how colour is controlled and worked: as a solid pigment in a façade; a refraction of neighbouring light and forms; the variation and flux of a natural material weathering; projected light.
The architectural photographer brings an added dimension to considering colour in building. The very act of making a picture interprets and comments on how the building performs with light.
In a frozen moment, an otherwise endless interplay of light on surfaces is shaped and simplified. The multiple lights and angles in which a building operates are encapsulated and promoted as one fixed frame and instance.
With the most impactful images, the building can be forever seen through that point of reference, a golden moment we want to re-live. However, that light is forever scattered and only the image remains. If we visit the building, we will see colours that are different, depending on the time and conditions.
The photograph hints at a kind of visual music being played with colour, where what we see is real but is intangible.
