Albert Veĉerka, Assoc. AIA

Summary: Photographer Albert Veĉerka was born and raised in the former Republic of Yugoslavia. He emigrated to New York City in 1992 and became an architectural photographer in 1998, largely assisting other photographers. In 2003, his photographs of Pennsylvania’s Eastern State Penitentiary were the focus of a solo show. He currently is represented by ESTO Photographics, the legendary firm founded by Ezra Stoller, and teaches architectural photography at City College of New York.

Education: Bachelor of Science in Architecture at City College of New York

Sources of inspiration: I like to periodically look at books of other photographers, Ezra Stoller being one of them, but also other people like Walker Evans, Berenice Abbot, and Eugene Atget.

Favorite movie: I like some of the earlier Orson Welles movies like Citizen Kane and The Third Man, and some of the Akira Kurosawa work.

Favorite places to go: I enjoy a lot of the Modern architecture in New York. It’s always a pleasure to see the Seagram Building, Lever House, Guggenheim Museum, and the Chrysler Building.

Last book read: The books I have started, but not finished this summer were The Power Broker, Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, and Bob Dylan’s Chronicles. Now I’m reading a Lance Armstrong book, so I guess there is some kind of a pattern there. I do read The New York Times and The New Yorker. Another favorite is Harvard Design Magazine, which had a very interesting issue in the fall of 1998, “Representations/Misrepresentations,” from which I assign several articles as readings for my class.

Digital or film?: Well, I don’t know that I have a totally informed decision these days. I started shooting digital this spring. I’d been playing around with it since last year, then really started working with it in spring. It’s a little more convenient in the way that there’s a certain immediacy of the previews that are available. It doesn’t seem to be any cheaper or faster, so it’s just a little different. I don’t know, maybe next year I’ll have a more definitive opinion, but it’s a point of debate these days.

How you got involved in architectural photography: I grew up in the former Yugoslavia and went to a technical-oriented high school with lots of math, physics, and other sciences. I started studying electrical engineering there, and that didn’t really go too well. That’s when I picked up photography, so my first subjects were architectural subjects. At that time, I knew very little about photography. I didn’t have much of an architectural background, but somehow I was drawn to the subject.

Why you do what you do: I really enjoy doing it and I’ve always had interest in architecture. Every assignment is different, and I get to work on many different projects. That’s partially what I like about architectural photography. In the architectural world, people work on a project for a long time. For me, it’s quite a bit shorter. I also enjoy the fact that I’m outside a lot, and I like the pleasant work atmosphere. It’s my job to show the building in its best light and the whole team puts a positive energy into that. It’s a very focused and intense process.

What you look for when taking photographs: When I go to work for other architects, there’s an obligation to represent this project that they’ve completed, so there’s always an expected set of photographs. But then there are photographs that I notice as I learn more about the project. One part of the job is to document the building in the best possible way. The other part is to find the essence of the building and try to capture that. So there’s this idea of documenting the building but creating a piece of art at the same time. The building is going to be a composition of architectural elements, so an architectural photographer has to work with those three-dimensional elements and then translate them into a two-dimensional form. The set of photographs is really speaking about that building, so it’s almost like a story, and each photograph is a paragraph in the story. Sometimes, you can pull just one of those out and say, “Here. This is the essence of the building,” like the photograph of Fallingwater that everyone knows. That’s the essence of the building, even though, in the set of photographs that Ezra Stoller created, there are probably 50 photographs.

Biggest professional challenge: I like to joke these days that the most challenging thing is to keep the batteries charged, all of the lights on in the building, and the TV screens and computer screens on when they’re in the picture. We have all of these motion sensors these days. Lights go on and off and people can’t control them. I have started working digitally, so batteries are a problem. It’s a different set of parameters than four years ago, but every job has its challenges. New York City is a challenge itself, trying to make sure that you’re there on the right day when there’s not a lot going on in the street in front of the building. Space is very tight and streets are very busy, so those are some of the kind of things that surround you while you’re trying to concentrate and understand the building and hopefully capture the essence of it in a couple of photographs.

Favorite time of day to work: Well, that really depends on the building, I think. I love to be up early in the morning, although a lot of times it’s grueling to get up when it’s pitch black outside. But when I do it, I really love it. It’s beautiful. I always think about the project and try to pick the best conditions for it. They are different for different projects, but I really like the early morning light and the late afternoon.

What an architect should look for when choosing an architectural photographer: It really depends on what the architect is looking for. There’s a sense of aesthetic that each person has. Every architect has a sense of aesthetic and every photographer has a sense of aesthetic that translates into a sense of composition. That is what distinguishes one photographer from another. There are lots of technical things that one can learn and master, but there’s that intuitive sense that you can’t really teach. I used to work with Paul Warchol, who had assisted Ezra Stoller when he started out. Paul said once that Ezra had this amazing sense of composition; that he just knew where to go, where the good shots would be. That’s one thing that you can’t teach, and there are subtle differences among photographers based on that. The other way would be to find somebody who you like to work with because architectural shoots are very intense experiences: a day, or two, or three of working together and waking up before dawn and staying on your feet the whole day, past dusk, and then doing the same thing the next day. So, it really helps if there’s a little bit of a connection on a personal level.

—Heather Livingston