Arnd Gottschalk
Arnd Gottschalk is a passionate amateur photographer from Stolberg/Germany, specialising in the fields of architecture, abstract, black and white, and fine art photography. Happily married, father of six wonderful children. He works at the Department of Public Relations and Marketing of FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences.Fine art architectural photography is a game of lights and shadows, of lines and patterns. It is way more than just taking pictures of buildings. You have to develop your own vision, your own attitude towards architecture and photography. Therefore, it is an art form in its own right.
To me, fine art architectural photography means starting a dialogue with the buildings, analysing them from different angles and different points of view, observing what the light looks like in different seasons, during the day and the night. It seems to be much easier to apply those principles to 20th and 21st century buildings. The use of glass and steel as building materials shapes the lights and shadows in a much clearer way than, for example, sandstone. My favourite place for fine art architectural photography is the Euro Liège TGV station in Liège-Guillemins/Belgium, designed and built by Santiago Calatrava. When I visited the station on the weekend of its opening, I understood the power of architecture for the first time. Since then, I have returned there on a regular basis to take pictures; and whenever I go there, I discover new sights.
Living in the densely populated area of Central Western Europe enables me to travel to several destinations which have an excellent reputation in the world of modern architecture – Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Antwerp in Belgium, Luxembourg, and the German cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf.
