Webinar | Through The Lens: Capturing Space

How can photography move beyond documentation to become a powerful interpretative tool for architecture? This question framed the webinar “Through the Lens: Capturing Space”, bringing together Emma Peter, internationally renowned architectural photographer, and Rasmus Hjortshøj, architect, photographer, and researcher, for a nuanced conversation on atmosphere, narrative, and the act of seeing.

Emma Peter’s talk unfolded as a deeply personal reflection on how classical cinema and photojournalism have shaped her photographic language. Growing up around film sets, Emma developed an early sensitivity to light, rhythm, and narrative, elements that continue to inform her work today. Drawing references from filmmakers such as Tarkovsky, Fellini, Hitchcock, and Kubrick, she described architectural photography as a form of “cinema within a single frame,” where stillness carries intention and movement exists beneath the surface.

For Emma, light is never neutral. It is character, psychology, and emotion. Whether waiting patiently for shadows to align with structure or embracing imperfection, lens flares, fleeting human gestures, unexpected moments, her process resists speed in favor of presence. In a world dominated by fast consumption and endless scrolling, she argued for images that make us pause, feel, and reconnect with our bodies in space. Architecture, in her work, becomes a stage for human narratives, even when no one is present.

Rasmus Hjortshøj continued the conversation from a different, yet complementary perspective, grounding photography in architectural thinking, research, and territory. Trained as an architect and holding a PhD in architecture and urban studies, Rasmus approaches photography as both a representational and investigative tool. His work seeks to establish a quiet but precise dialogue between architecture, environment, and viewer, emphasizing atmosphere as both a physical and aesthetic condition.

Through projects ranging from built works to large-scale territorial studies, Rasmus illustrated how photography can frame architecture within its broader environmental and cultural context. His research on coastal territories in the Anthropocene exemplifies this approach, where landscapes perceived as “natural” are revealed as deeply curated, constructed, and entangled with human systems. By combining mapping and photography, he repositions the image not as a supplement, but as a form of spatial knowledge in itself.

Despite their distinct methodologies, both speakers converged on shared values: clarity over spectacle, emotion over excess, and intention over perfection. In the discussion that followed, questions of collaboration between architects and photographers, authorship, education, and the impact of emerging technologies surfaced repeatedly. Both Emma and Rasmus emphasized the importance of trust, shared understanding, and genuine engagement with projects—arguing that meaningful images emerge not from briefs alone, but from dialogue and care.

This session turned attention to the act of recording architecture itself. Photography, as the speakers reminded us, is where architecture meets memory, where design is handed over to the world and begins a new life through interpretation.

_article written by Daniela Moreira da Silva
_speaker 01: Ema Peter [Architectural Photographer]
_speaker 02: Rasmus Hjortshøj [Architect And Photographer]