Esto Welcomes Richard Barnes

The Reach-Kennedy Center for the performing Arts © Richard Barnes/Esto Location: Washington D.C., Architect: Steven Holl Architects

Esto is pleased to announce the representation of photographer Richard Barnes.

Richard Barnes is an architectural photographer whose practice is shaped by his time spent in Japan and the editorial commissions he continues to pursue alongside his personal projects. Over the course of his career, he has photographed buildings for many of the most prominent architectural firms in the US and Europe, including Norman Foster, OMA, Steven Holl, SOM, Mario Botta, Gensler, and CookFox, among others. He is the photographer behind numerous books on architecture, most recently Renaissance, documenting the new Princeton University Art Museum designed by David Adjaye. What distinguishes Barnes' architectural work is the way he brings an editorial sensibility together with a deep technical command of the medium, making buildings come alive on the page.

Beyond architecture, Barnes has built a parallel career in editorial photography, with commissions from National Geographic, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Geo, and Architectural Digest. His personal projects have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States and abroad, and his work is held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery, LACMA, the Hirshhorn Museum, and numerous others. His work has also garnered some of the most significant honors in the field. He received the Julius Shulman Award for Excellence in Architectural Photography in 2011, the Rome Prize in 2005–2006, and the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Photography for his series on the cabin of Ted Kaczynski, which was featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. He was named the 2009 Sidman Fellow for the Arts at the University of Michigan's Institute for the Humanities, completed a residency at Light Work/Syracuse University in 2010, and most recently held a residency at the Kranich Museum in Hessenburg, Germany, which culminated in the 2024 exhibition Übersehen/Overlook.

Barnes is the author of three monographs. Animal Logic, published in 2009, was included in the American Institute of Graphic Arts' 50 Books/50 Covers competition in 2010. Veil (the Glass House) followed in 2014, and Object Lessons was released in 2017 to accompany the exhibition of the same name. Currently, Barnes is at work on a new book and exhibition exploring the quarries of northern Italy and the sculpture workshops at Carrara.

We are thrilled to welcome Richard to the Esto team. To view more of his work, please visit here.