“All my work, whether it be editorial, architectural or my personal photographic projects are always informed and sustained by an interest in architecture and how we inhabit and position ourselves in the built environment.”
Princeton University Museum of Art, Princeton University, NJ, Princeton NJ, David Adjaye Associates. © Richard Barnes/Esto
Richard Barnes architectural photography is informed by his time spent in Japan and the editorial commissions he continues to work on in addition to his personal projects. He has photographed the buildings of many of the leading architectural firms in the US and Europe including Norman Foster, OMA, Steven Holl, SOM, Mario Botta, Gensler, CookFox and many others. He is the photographer for numerous books on architecture including most recently, Renaissance, on the new Princeton Museum of Art by David Adjaye. In addition to his architectural photography he also has been commissioned by publications such as National Geographic, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Smithsonian, Geo, and Architectural Digest. In his architectural photography he combines an editorial perspective with a thorough knowledge of the technical side of what it takes to make a building come alive through photography.
Barnes' personal projects have been shown in museums and galleries in America and abroad. His work has been honored with the Julius Shulman award for excellence in Architectural Photography in 2011. He was a recipient of the Rome Prize 2005-2006 and his photographs of the cabin of Ted Kaczynski, aka the "Unabomber," were featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and awarded the Alfred Eisenstadt Award for Photography. He was the 2009 recipient of the Sidman Fellow for the Arts from the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan. In 2010 he completed a residency at Lightwork/Syracuse University. Most recently he finished a residency at the Kranich Museum in Hessenburg, Germany that resulted in the exhibition, Ubersehen/Overlook which opened in 2024 in Hessenburg. A monograph of his work entitled Animal Logic, published in 2009, has received favorable reviews and was included in the American Institute of Graphic Arts juried competition/exhibition 50 books/50 covers in 2010. Veil (the Glass House) was published in 2014 and the book, Object Lessons, was published to accompany the exhibition of the same name in 2017.
Currently Barnes is working on a book and exhibition of work done in and around the quarries of northern Italy and the sculpture workshops at Carrara.
recent Clients
Allied Works Architecture
Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Eskeu-Dinkel-Ripple Architects
Fumihiko Maki & Associates
Gensler
HOK
Johnston Marklee
Lake | Flato Architects
Lyra Architect
Machado Silvetti
Mario Botta Architect
Michael Bell Architecture
Morphosis
Natoma Architects
Norman Foster Partners
Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)
Rafael Moneo Arquitecto
Renzo Piano & Associates
Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW)
Richard Meier Partners
SHOP Architects
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)
Stanley Saitowitz / Natoma Architects
Steven Holl Architects
Susan Rodriguez Architecture
Yoshio Taniguchi and Associates
Publications
National Geographic
The New Yorker
The New York Times Magazine
The Smithsonian
Geo
Architectural Digest