KEN KONCHEL
As a photographer, Ken Konchel is drawn to the expressive power of buildings. He’s interested in provocatively capturing architecture in an abstract, graphic way, with an intention to make compelling photographs that remove the context and distill architecture to nothing but relationships of shape, line, form, pattern, detail, tone, and/or texture.
Architecture forms the physical environment of our lives. It connects us to the past, it helps define our relationships to one another, and it gives us a sense of place and identity. Architecture also embodies our values and expresses our individual and collective aspirations. And most importantly, architecture enhances and advances our creative legacy. Yet something so integral to the sense of who we are - something that contributes immeasurably to our quality of life – is often dismissed as mundane, taken for granted, or at worst, ignored. Konchel’s ambition is to raise awareness of and appreciation for architecture by presenting it as engaging and dynamic geometric arrangements and interactions. Konchel uses photography to substantiate the connection between art and architecture.
Konchel’s aim is to photograph buildings in arresting ways, creating compositions that do not immediately reveal themselves as architecture. Buildings present rich opportunities to imaginatively explore the angle, the cube, the curve, the triangle, and the rectangle. By examining these forms individually or by grouping them into unconventional configurations, Konchel aspires to challenge and captivate people by introducing them to architecture’s intriguing visual possibilities. He strives to take photographs that disclose their content in layers of meaning that more richly reward with repeated viewings.
