The Dance Is In The Details: The Photographs Of Adrian Gaut
the Jumex Museum, Mexico
Born and raised in Portland, Oregon and based in NYC, Adrian Gaut first studied to be a painter, then found his way to photography. He shoots everything, but his first love—and perhaps his specialty—is architecture. I met up with him on a recent trip to LA. We sipped green tea at a friend’s Malibu home while he took me through some of his favorite architecture images, most of which were shot abroad. “There’s a sense of discovery that comes with travel,” he told me. “The idea that you don’t know what’s around the corner. You go where you think is going to be interesting. That excitement and that quality of the unknown is super important to me.”
“This is the Jumex Museum in Mexico City by the architect David Chipperfield. I went to shoot it on assignment for W magazine, prior to it opening. I do that a lot. It’s like, ‘Here’s a museum and there’s two angles and you need to make it look like it’s done ‘cause the story’s coming out in three months when it’s going to be finished.’ ”
Housing Project, Portugal
“There’s the things that I’m interested in and there’s the things the magazines are interested in, and the point where they intersect has to have a story, it has to be new or it has to have some twist. This was housing project in Portugal that I discovered via an architecture blog. Part of my process is that I’m always keeping an eye out for interesting projects and things that might be interesting from an editorial point of view. This was for DuJour. This is a residential project, so these are all balconies. It was on a hillside and I sort of came up to it, in my car through Google Maps, and this was kind of the first view I saw.”
Oscar Niemeyer Building, Brazil
“So this is Sao Paulo, this is Oscar Niemeyer, this is a project I did for Pin-Up, an architecture magazine. They were doing a Brazil issue. I was so happy to be there. Niemeyer was such an important figure in my appreciation of architecture. His work is like sculpture. He was one of the true visionaries of the field.”
‘60s architecture, Detroit
“Detroit was another magazine assignment that was very open ended. The assignment was, ‘We want your vision of Detroit.’ The story was me wandering and discovering stuff. I found that shot. I was basically waiting for like 30 minutes for the dude to be right there. Detroit had this heroic, optimistic, ‘60s architecture, which is stuff that I love.”
Richard Serra Sculpture, Qatar
“This was a project I was commissioned to shoot for the Wall Street Journal, who have been a great ongoing client. The Qatari government commissioned [Richard] Serra to do this project. Serra drove around for like a month and found this place between the two plateaus—it was an ancient seabed. His idea was to do these four plates buried in the ground at the same height as the bluffs. It’s spread out over a kilometer. I went for a day-and-a-half. Flew into Qatar, got in in the evening, woke at 3 am, drive out there, it’s 120 degrees and like 90 per cent humidity, just really punishing conditions. So this is pre-sunrise. It’s really impressive—this was the most intense manifestation of experiencing a Serra.”
AT&T Long lines Building, New York City
“This is the AT&T Long lines Building, which is in Tribeca. I see it everyday. It still baffles me that it ever got built in the first place—a 30-40 story windowless building. It looks like the Death Star. I love it. I love that it exists and I love that it’s so uncompromising. It’s the epitome of Brutalist architecture. I make a conscious effort to be always shooting in New York.”
