Private audience with Edmund Sumner

At the latest in a sequence of architecturally inspired lectures at the practice, photographer of architecture Edmund Sumner offered fresh insights into architectural heritage, raising important questions about the ways in which our relationships with buildings change over time.

Edmund took friends and colleagues on a photographic odyssey through India and Mexico, the Middle East and Japan, sharing behind-the-scenes insights into his creative process, and recollections about his sources of inspiration. He then focused in on his ‘Traces’ collection – then free to view from the Bury Place display boxes – peeling back the layers to invite ruminations about how the same spaces have been experienced in different ways at different junctures in time.

Sometimes, Edmund postulated, traces can assume a material manifestation, appearing as graffiti at public conveniences, as impressions on staircases, or as artwork adorning cave walls; more often than not, they are registered in something less tangible: the atmosphere.

Edmund reflected that it was his calling and his duty as a photographer to capture spaces as his contemporaries experienced them, so that future generations might be able to reflect on how their perceptive mode had changed; on what had been gained atmospherically, and on what had been lost or changed through successive programmes of reinvention and repair. He recognises and reflects that his photographs might themselves become traces, aesthetic histograms reflecting the spirit and ambience of the spaces that elicited a compelling emotional response.

Rodić Davidson would like to extend its thanks to Edmund Sumner and Albumen Gallery for contributing to our creative programme. The practice looks forward to welcoming another creative force in Raphaé Memon, who is due to speak on architecture and scenography as he officially opens his window installation next week.