“How do you photograph architecture that takes everyday life as its programme, and architectural quality as an inclusive condition? The kind of architecture that does not seek, in the first place, to overwhelm with sublime visual effects? … In the search for a photographer for this Architectural Review, an important starting point was the longing for an uninhibited gaze. … For an uninhibited gaze you need to possess a hunger for the world like that of a seventeen-year-old. We selected Harry Gruyaert, a seventy-year-old. In choosing Gruyaert, we were opting for a person rather than a photographic school or an agency. He takes photographs by being present. The presence is self-conscious: there is no hidden camera stealing a shot, but a photographer who is there to participate in the moment. He is not the kind of person to chase, like a man possessed, after great historical events as they unfold. On the contrary, he seeks the moment in an environment that is permeated with slowly changing routines, whether a Belgian road or a village in the Moroccan Atlas Mountains. Figures enter the frame, but it is not the people that make the event. The event is the movement in which space, time and light coalesce. That sounds almost metaphysical, but in Gruyaert’s photographs you can see it clearly: a room, a ray of light, a passer-by that merges with a shadow. The ingredients are unsurprising, but their combination will define whether a picture is a success or a failure. Gruyaert searches until he can pin down that successful moment. … The photographs in this series are, indeed, architectural photographs. They do not pretend to make the design more legible, but complement the plans and photographs that were delivered by the architecture offices. Gruyaert’s pictures show how we are affected by architecture.”

Text excerpts: Stefan Siffer, Flemish Architecture Institute
Architectural Review Flanders N°11 – Embedded Architectures. 2014.
Antwerp: Flemish Architecture institute. <a href='http://www.vai.be/en' target='_blank'>www.vai.be/en</a>