Milan-based William Batsford was born in Toronto, Canada.
Milan-based William Batsford was born in Toronto, Canada. He has been pursuing his passion for black and white photography for years. He patiently waits for the perfect moment to snap his photos.The Velasca tower in Milan with a moody, Irish-looking sky taken from one of the gargoyles on the Duomo of Milan. This architecture photo is not only one of the most famous by William Batsford, Milanese by adoption, it is a real manifesto of his idea of photography.
William Batsford is a Canadian-born architecture photographer who lives and works in Milan, and he only works in black and white; he started out in 1999 with large format photography, using a wooden field camera. His pictures capture 20th century buildings, and have attracted a great deal of attention, but they also share a unique, unrepeatable moment with the person looking at them.
The fact is, William Batsford's shots have a timeless beauty and he adds the temporal component as part of the narrative, given that so many of his photos are generated by the uniqueness of that particular moment in time. The sky or the light that can never be the same again make each of his photos a unique artwork. Not surprisingly - like photographers of animals and nature - he patiently waits for just the right moment to click on the shutter, returning to the site many times to get that moment.
When you look at his photos of Milan, you almost don't realise how contemporary they are, because they look like snapshots taken in the past, back when the majestic architecture he portrays were built. The same thing happens with the photos of London, including the shot of the statue of Winston Churchill in front of Big Ben. But all of this is returned with classical lines and purity, making him one of that series of exquisitely contemporary architecture photographers lacking all temporal references.
Indeed, in this historical period, where the advent of the internet has basically wiped out the concept of linear time to arrive at the surface of time, his photographs stand out as an expression of the new philosophical approach of Webcreativity, thanks to his personal research and involvement, the two factors that make his pictures emotively enduring. So, there is a reasoned premise behind Batsford's photos, each of which is a hymn to slow beauty, or rather “slow photography”, the result of a profound contemplation of the context. In sum, William Batsford gives us photos with conceptually clean lines that easily engage with my geographic other, and turn into universal media.
His photos are being exhibited at the Expowall gallery in Milan.
Christiane Bürklein (@chrisbuerklein)
William Batsford - Galleria Expowall
