SIGHTLINES: Architecture, Photography, and the Mutability of the Image

Abstract:

Architectural images do not simply record buildings—they construct ways of seeing, reinforcing particular narratives while obscuring others. Montage—derived from the French verb monter, meaning "to assemble" or "to put together"—first emerged in film as a method of sequencing images to construct meaning. It has since expanded to broadly describe techniques of selecting, editing, and piecing together fragments to form a new whole. In the context of architecture and photography, montage functions as both a representational device and a critical method that advances a body of work.

Photography, in particular, has the capacity to do more than depict architecture—through techniques of montage, it manipulates, fragments, and reconstructs it. Acts of selection, framing, and composition generate new spatial and conceptual relationships, collapsing distinctions between past and present, fact and fiction, visibility and erasure. This extends beyond photography to other image-making technologies, such as AI-generated imagery, which, while capable of producing novel compositions, remains fundamentally reliant on existing architectural references, drawing from and recombining visual precedents.

This symposium examines the mutability of the architectural image through photography, emphasizing how acts of appropriation and recomposition shape architectural discourse. Montage techniques—whether analog, digital, or AI-assisted—can disrupt linear histories, fracture singular viewpoints, and expose underlying power structures embedded in architectural representation. What happens when architecture is not only represented through images but constructed by them?

SIGHTLINES brings together four panelists—James Casebere, David Hartt, Karel Klein, and Olivia Vien—whose practices and research operate at the intersection of architecture and photography to critically engage how acts of alteration and recomposition participate in the formation of architecture itself. Through a series of short presentations followed by a moderated discussion, the event will explore how photographic and montage-based practices not only document architecture but actively produce its meaning and futures.