Sketch Series: Harout Dedeyan

With a background in architecture, it is easy to understand Associate Principal Harout Dedeyan's fascination with the built environment. Even when he is not working, the Los Angeles-based employee enjoys mixing business with pleasure - that is, incorporating architecture into his illuminating photography. For this Sketch Series we asked Harout to show us what life looks like through a short-shift lens.Tell us about your photographs.The photos you see here are part of a series called Art on Architecture, something I started two years ago. I shoot buildings that are used as canvasses, or I use them as backdrops to public art. Sometimes the architecture gets left out and I just shoot the art, other times the reverse. I then print them on archival paper, create handmade postcards and send them to people dear to me, with whom I want to stay in touch.I love this old fashioned exercise in an age of electrons traveling at the speed of light. I don’t want anyone to ‘follow’ me or ‘like’ my pictures. Sometimes it’s very soothing to slow down and go back in time.I also enlarge and frame the pictures, hoping one day to have the opportunity to show them.How did you first get into photography?On my 12th birthday, my aunt Elizabeth gave me a Kodak Instamatic. After the first roll of black and white film I was hooked. Throughout the years the Instamatic morphed into an SLR, medium format, 4x5… What followed were classes in architectural and product photography and a small side business shooting architectural models. My trick was getting very close and using a short shift-lens giving the model a very realistic look at eye level instead of the bird’s eye views prevalent at the time. Eventually architecture became a career, photography turning into a hobby.What are some of the subjects that you’re interested in photographing?I’m mostly interested in photographing the built environment. I like responding to places, looking at marks and traces, making the over-looked noticed, acknowledged through my photographs.What was the last thing that inspired you?I once saw an exhibition by Robert Holgren called Toy Camera Works. A successful commercial photographer puts his expensive gear and gizmos aside and uses a toy camera for his personal work. It was inspiring, and very appealing.