Photographer Spotlight

Each month we turn the spotlight on one of our photographers, giving them an opportunity to tell you a little more about themselves and their work. This month it's the turn of Quintin Lake.

Quintin is one of a small number of British architectural photographers who originally trained as an architect. Before taking up photography, Quintin won a scholarship to the London Architectural Association, then went on to work at Grimshaw Architects, where he was on the team that designed the celebrated Eden Project, in Cornwall.

Quintin writes: "As an architecture student I always used photography like a sketchbook for ideas: Jotting down the difference between the intention and use of buildings, abstract patterns or the hidden harmonies of light and form in the built world around us. As my studies continued these images became more important to me in themselves than as an inspiration for design. I guess this was the moment I realised I was a photographer more than an architect.

While still at the AA I worked on a graphic design project for Atkins, which lead to my first paid architectural photography assignment and even purchasing some images from VIEW on their behalf. This was seven years ago. I still shoot for Atkins and other architects including my contemporaries from the AA who are starting to get their projects in the magazines.

My most memorable, and shortest shoot was at Pripyat, 1km from the the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant that exploded in 1986 resulting in the worst nuclear accident in history. The town was designed as an exemplar of Soviet planning for the 50,000 people who worked at the power plant. My visit, inspired by Robert Polidori's earlier images of Chernobyl, were shot in 2007 over 5 hours, apparently the safe period of exposure. Trees have grown through cracks in the streets and around all the buildings, diffusing the light and giving the objects inside an eerie studio lit appearance.

Surprisingly the physical devastation stems from looting and gradual building collapse, not from the explosion. Over the last ten years people have intruded regularly into the military exclusion zone, stealing everything from irradiated toilet seats to the marble cladding from hotel walls. The photographs, which have been exhibited widely, capture a memory of three traumas: the invisible radiation, the visible looting and the gradual collapse of a ghost town.

Last year I completed a book of my work, "Drawing Parallels: Architecture Observed", published by Papadakis. It's a source of architectural inspiration from around the world with material drawn from my travels in over 60 countries. The format of the book is a series of diptychs, where the meaning of the photographs is in the space between the two images; the viewers mind. The pairings of photographs mix images of well known buildings in Europe with vernacular architecture in countries like Peru, Uganda, Japan & Iran. The intention is to give a fresh approach to looking at architecture and to encourage new aesthetic connections. Richard Wentworth, who wrote the foreword, describes the book as an "un-guide book where the imagination which we associate with the promise of all books is the primary agent for giving directions".

I'm currently completing a photographic commission for a book by Francis Lincoln publishing on three buildings by James Stirling. While waiting by the tripod for a dusk shot at Stirling's Engineering building at the University of Leicester, a passerby noticed me, looked and the camera, looked at the building and commented, "Are you waiting for a miracle mate!?"

It's always good to be reminded architectural taste is subjective."

For more examples of work visit www.quintinlake.com or follow me at twitter.com/quintinlake