dennis gilbert 1951 - 2021
“I am attracted to both sides of photography and architecture: where science and art overlay each other. First a South African engineer, I seemed to be headed for a Silicon Valley somewhere. Having left South Africa in 1975 for a year in South America, I found myself in a different Californian valley, studying photography at CalArts north of Los Angeles: particularly the topographical American photographers of the 1930’s onwards. It is right to learn from others. Favourites? Robert Adams, Nicholas Nixon [portraits too], Stephen Shore, John Pfahl, Lewis Baltz, Walker Evans, Paul Strand, Lee Friedlander, Ed Ruscha, Dorothea Lange, Berenice Abbott.
After the comfort of the Jo Ann Callis classroom, my task was, naturally, to work out the next question: what to do with my new enthusiasm? where does the camera go and why? where is the duck’s eye? low or high? [this was years before Iwan Baan]. Consider a large camera in a small room with furniture, and just a few sheets of transparency film. Under the darkcloth, a dim image beckons on the ground glass, upside down and backwards. From where is it best to feel the space of the interior or the weight of the superstructure? Back then, you needed lots of kit, a spotmeter and [thank you, Edwin Land] help in Polaroid form. Fortunately, there remains a thrill in figuring out a new picture to lob into the world’s archives that conveys the architecture and gives an idea of the physical experience. A composition that somehow works, regardless of the ‘rules’.
All this was, I believe, adequate training for digital photography which offers a new universe.
I have had the wonderful good fortune to work for several formidable architects: Norman Foster, O’Donnell + Tuomey, Grafton Architects, not forgetting the excellent Walters & Cohen Architects for example”...
In 2005 the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded Dennis an Honorary Fellowship [Hon FRIBA] for his contribution to architecture.
From 2014 to 2020 Dennis documented in a team project with fellow photographers Anthony Coleman and Kilian O’Sullivan the demolition and reconstruction of Battersea Power Station. A project dear to his heart.
He sadly passed away in summer 2021.
Susan Bockelmann, Dennis Gilbert’s partner, DENNIS GILBERT, The Estate of Dennis Gilbert
