Glenn Goldman
International Artistic Photography Awards
Interview with Glenn Goldman
ARCHITECTURE CATEGORY WINNER
Glenn Goldman is an architect, planner, and educator as well as a photographer. Goldman earned the Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia and the Master in Architecture degree from Harvard. He was the Founding Director of the School of Art + Design with responsibility for programs in Digital Design, Industrial Design, and Interior Design at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark, NJ. Now Director Emeritus, he is a Professor of Architecture and Design in the Hillier College at NJIT and has received awards for teaching, research, and creative works. A registered architect in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York, as well as a licensed professional planner in New Jersey, he is a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects and a past president of ACADIA (the Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture). He is a Pioneer Member of ACM SIGGRAPH, chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee, and recipient of the 2025 SIGGRAPH Distinguished Educator Award. Background/Photography: I’ve been interested in photography since I was young (starting with a Kodak Brownie Reflex then moving on to a Starmite followed by an Instamatic; then over time moving on to SLR, DSLR, and mirrorless cameras). But I was also always interested in building and making things which led to an interest in architecture. By training and professional licensure, I am an architect. When I was a first-year student in college, I took an art history course, and the photos of the buildings captured my imagination. I started taking photographs of buildings in order to build up my own personal library of visual data of/about architecture. Eventually, when I started teaching, it was important for me to develop and generate my own visual materials to help students in their work and, hopefully, to inspire them as I had been previously inspired.
Canterbury Cathedral is an extraordinary building. There are many interesting and beautiful details and spaces and the fan vault in the tower is unlike anything I’ve seen. The expression of structure is enriched with myriad details and a symmetrical design. Careful use of yellow, blue, red and orange provide greater interest to the ceiling and one cannot help but look up when walking through the space. The tower is a visual treat that warrants celebration.
The space and details are designed according to the principles of both axial and rotational symmetry. It is a square space on the ceiling with a circle in the center. The primary circle at the intersection of the fan vaults contains additional concentric circles and eight additional circles surround the center circle that contains the shield. I suppose that it is possible to show this space at various angles to make it seem more dynamic, but it is designed to emphasize line, shape, and symmetry. Everything about this ceiling is organized according to classic geometric compositional principles. The photograph merely tries to honor what appears to be the design intent.
This was a morning photograph, but it was an interior shot, so neither weather nor general lighting outdoors were critical. There was a reasonable amount of daylight entering through windows to illuminate the space.
As an architect, I have too much respect for the built environment to place new elements or significantly modify or expand the work. I will “clean up” a photo (like denoise or occasionally remove elements that are temporary and not part of the building), but my goal is to be true to the feeling that the building gives me when I visit it. I want to communicate to the viewer, as best I can, the way I experienced the building and/or space, what I noticed, and how I felt when I was there.
This photo required a digital camera (Nikon D810) that could handle a reasonably mid-level ISO (5600 for this photograph) without introducing too much noise, a zoom lens, a steady hand and patience, and image processing software (Adobe Photoshop, On1 Photo Raw). The site, Canterbury Cathedral in England, is both a sacred space and popular tourist attraction and neither flash nor tripod were allowed. Nevertheless, I spent about 30 minutes “parked” under the center of the tower taking multiple handheld photographs trying to get the best composition I could while trying different focal lengths, apertures, and shutter speeds.
I’m not so sure that my photos do that as the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. A photo such as this one that is centered and emphasizes symmetry and geometry, may be stable and static, but the clarity of detail, patterns, and color give it life. Careful adjustment of lighting, contrast, highlights/midtones/shadows, etc. in post-processing makes a dull image into one that has more life and better communicates the evocative properties of the subject.
This is a validation that my photography has been recognized by professionals as art and having value. As a teacher in a research university, we are constantly asked to “prove” the value of our creative and/or scholarly work. This level of peer recognition, especially winning first place in an international competition, signifies the merit of the work.