Author Description

Reconnaissance presents a cross-section of the work of Canadian-born architecture photographer Nic Lehoux. The photographs featured were taken throughout the past decade, presenting a selection of both personal and professional work. An overarching feature of this collection is also one of Lehoux's trademarks: a rare ability to capture people within the built environment at the decisive moment. The book includes several thematic essays, many of them exploring marginal environments in urban landscapes to depict a rapidly changing world. This global outlook includes studies of Shanghai, where older sections of the city are disappearing at a frightening rate, and several different locations in the USA and Europe, where industrial urban areas are decaying at a similar pace. In another photo-essay, Lehoux uses his distinctive 'selective focus' style to capture the essence of the ancient city of Matera in Italy. A further exhaustive photo-essay, on the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, includes both personal and professional elements. The work Lehoux has done for some of the world's most influential and progressive architects is also featured within themes that dictate the essential strengths of his work: 'Form' contains images of architectural abstraction and compositional purity; 'Light' is an exaltation of architecture's most noble tool; 'Texture' documents the variety and poetry of surfaces; while 'Object' and 'Space' depict the beauty of tangible and elusive shapes. This book features over 200 original images and is produced as part of joint project between Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers and the Architectural Photography Foundation. It accompanies an exhibition of the photography featured which in 2012 toured through the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzen.