Eyes of the building

Author: Steve Mok
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-04-01
Features: Others "photograph" buildings, but as someone who has been involved with architecture for decades, I use a "MokStyle" perspective to "cut" buildings with my camera. MokStyle is a term given to me by an American journalist, referring specifically to my photographic style that uses light and angles to "cut" buildings. Whether in the past (Europe, America, Japan) or now in China, people demand that buildings not be distorted when photographed—verticality and balance are the basic requirements. From this perspective, I am a peculiar person; "formal and neat" is not the whole requirement for my photos. I also focus on the details of the interior and exterior because my photography emphasizes "spatial" photography, highlighting the intersection of surfaces and lines to make the images vivid and three-dimensional. Only then can people fully interpret the architecture. This book is a photographic collection by Chinese photographer Steve Mok about modern architectural design. Steve Mok—engaged in architectural and interior photography—has spent twenty years in Taipei and twenty years in the United States; now, spending one month in the U.S. and one month flying to Shanghai, he may spend another twenty years in Shanghai. As a professional architectural photographer, Steve Mok speaks with his "eyes of architecture": he places great emphasis on his own interpretation. For the subjects he plans to photograph, he carefully observes them at different times and under different lighting conditions, striving to reflect the architect's style while adding his own interpretation. Therefore, while ordinary people see a beautiful building and admire it, thinking it "looks good," he can out this intangible "goodness" and sensitively express the building's strongest characteristics. With his experience in photographing abroad and traveling the world, Steve Mok's lens dares to "cut" buildings, separating them from their surroundings—he emphasizes that when observing a building in front of you, you don’t need to see it in its entirety; you must dare to use special lighting, angles, and shadows to "cut" and separate it.