Tell us about the five projects that you’ve selected as your favourites. What is it that was special about these projects?

Property developer Christian Bourdais asked 11 architects to design a holiday house in the Aragon mountains in northern Spain. The first house to be built, Solo Pezo by Chilean architectural firm Pezo von Ellrichshausen, is a concrete fortress-like house with rooms coming off a central courtyard. I had the chance to spend two days photographing the house and experienced it in both bright sunlight and driving rain.

I was lucky enough to be asked by the designer Rufus Knight to photograph Te Koha – The New Zealand Room; part of the New Zealand Institute of Architect’s Future Islands exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016. Although a very small space, Rufus’s use of New Zealand materials, especially wool and wood, gave the New Zealand room a beautiful sophisticated and warm feel.

Photographing Mies van der Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat was a personal project I had wanted to do since reading Simon Mawer’s novel The Glass Room. The novel traces the house through its incredible history. The house is really very much written as one of the central characters. Apparently the travertine marble wall glows like fire when the winter light enters the house mid-winter. I photographed it mid-summer (literally) and spent a happy day padding around the house in the mandatory plastic socks.

The Erber House is one of the houses featured in the book Matthew Arnold and I published on mid-century Christchurch architecture. It was designed by the architect Nicholas Kennedy in the ’60s. It’s been lived in continuously by the original owners who commissioned the architect. There’s a real feeling of home and place about the house; something I love photographing just as much as the actual architecture.

The Van Doesburg house in suburban Paris was built in the 1930s by the architect as a family home for his wife Nelly van Moorsel and family. It now functions as an artist’s residency. I was commissioned to take photos of the Dutch artist couple Daniëlle van Ark & Thomas Raat who were living in the house at the time. They’d turned the house into an exhibition space and invited their artist friends to exhibit pieces.

How did you get started with photography? And were you always interested in architecture and buildings or has that evolved over time?

I was given a film camera for my 21st birthday and loved the process of developing prints in the darkroom. Years later, whilst living in London, just for fun I did a night class in black and white photography at Camberwell Art school. This led to a four-year part-time photography degree at Westminster University. The course was weighted half-theory and half-practical. I enjoyed the theory side of things much more than the studio work.

I became fascinated by architecture at this time. However, I do think the love of architecture comes more from that feeling of being in a particular building I had as a kid. One building that springs to mind is Warren and Mahoney’s central public library in Christchurch, where I spent many a happy Saturday morning choosing books.

How do you capture a space? What is the secret to conveying the feeling of being there?

It is a cliché but it is so much about the light. As well as using the light, I play around with the depth of field and use my medium format camera when I can. I start a shoot using a tripod for wide shots and then like to take handheld detailed shots from different angles and heights. The result is often not perfect architectural photos, instead the aim being more atmospheric imagery. In this way, perhaps I’m not really a classic architectural photographer. 

How do you stay inspired outside of work? 

Lots of energetic dog walking of our 18-month labrador Aalto, either at the beach in the winter when dogs are tolerated or in the countryside close to Motpelllier, which is surprisingly wild.

Are there any projects or types of projects that you would love to photograph?

I’d be over the moon to have a photographic project in Japan.

When can we hope to see you in New Zealand again?

I’m really looking forward to being back in February 2022 for the first time in two years. I always arrive home with my hand luggage chock-full with rolls of film for the projects which I invariably do while I’m back. 

Mary Gaudin and Matthew Arnold self-published Down The Long Driveway You’ll See It in 2014, a book on modernist New Zealand houses. Last year, they published a second book, I Never Met a Straight Line I Didn’t Like, which focuses on mid-century Christchurch homes.