Inspired by the masters of light

3 October 2011

In the last in his series about influences on lighting design, Admir Jukanovic focuses on photography’s many parallels with his profession

The etymology of the word ‘photography’ suggests how closely the medium is linked to lighting design. “‘Photo’ means ‘light’ in Greek and ‘graph’ means ‘to draw’,” explains lighting designer Admir Jukanovic, from London-based practice Mindseye. “That explains everything essential about photography – photography is drawing with light. And that is the major unifying factor with lighting design. Photographers draw with light for a picture, we draw with light in a building.”

Jukanovic argues that still life photography, in particular, has parallels with the process of lighting design: “In still life photography, the subject is lit with a main light from above – often from the top-left – and a secondary light is used to fill, with other side lights adding shape and depth. Architectural spaces are lit in the same way. If you only had main lights from above focusing on certain parts of a building, it would be very patchy: you need lights to fill and have a secondary role.” And the still life photographer, like the lighting designer, is an expert in establishing visual hierarchies so that the viewer is drawn to particular parts of any subject. “If you enter a space,” Jukanovic continues, “you will find the same hierarchies: different areas draw your eyes to different extents because of the emphasis of light.”

Both mediums also have a similar relationship to natural light. “All types of photographers are always aware of daylight and what it can do. They either use it to their advantage or imitate it if they don’t have it, or they add light sources to the daylight in order to create a perfect look for the picture. That is exactly what lighting designers and architects do: we are aware that daylight is important, but also that it might need to be controlled or enhanced to make a space work perfectly.”

Attention to depth is another theme common to both disciplines. “A photographer will often use directional lights from certain angles on a subject, to give the ordinary a new perspective and create a perception of depth. Photography is a flat medium but it seeks a very strong, three-dimensional representation. As lighting designers, we have that three-dimensional space already, but it is still important that we add light carefully to the space to make its depth understood by someone inside it.”

Depth and atmosphere

One of Jukanovic’s favourite photographers is Ansel Adams, the American artist who came to prominence in the 1930s with his mesmeric landscape photographs. “All his pictures are in black and white – that’s something we lighting designers can’t do!

They are very beautiful because they play with that perception of depth, as well as contrast. His works always bring out the core of his subject – its essence, or its essential idea or information – through all his many technical abilities with lenses, apertures, exposures and the composition of the actual frame itself.”

American portraitist Annie Leibovitz, who has focused on the famous since the 1970s, also “captures the essence of her subjects – the persona of the people she photographs”. Jukanovic picks out Leibovitz’s 2007 portrait of the Queen as a telling example, in which the subject is seated in Buckingham Palace, with muted light cast from the open window. “If you looked behind the camera, there would have been a lot of Leibovitz’s additional lighting and other equipment – but in the picture, all that is hidden. We have the same goal in lighting design: to light a building but to keep the lights invisible, to hide them in niches and other recesses.

“Another parallel is how Leibovitz retouches her images. The tones in Leibovitz’s photo of the Queen are brown and silver – these tones wouldn’t have been there in the interior. Like many photographers she uses chemical or digital technology to bring colours out and emphasise her ideas. Lighting design doesn’t retouch a building, but it does bring out what is essential and what is important about it in a similar way.”

Shadow and colour

Jukanovic also mentions the German-Australian master provocateur Helmut Newton. “I haven’t chosen him because I want to reproduce a naked girl in Lighting magazine! I find it interesting how he uses shadow, sometimes just a thin line of shadow, to hide parts of his nudes. He uses light to reveal and hide at the same time. Light plays this role as disguise, and lighting design in architecture also plays that role, making some elements of a building visible and others not.”

Jukanovic also praises photographer Steve McCurry – known for his National Geographic photography essays – for his extraordinary use of colour. “In our profession, colour is very important. I’m always very particular about how I use it in my own practice. I try to restrict myself to only a few colours and think very carefully about how they are used. McCurry’s photographs often have just two, outstanding colours that are contrasting but complementary. For his famous picture Afghan Girl [1985] there is just red against the green. Or he will focus on one strong colour to bring out a persona of his subject. But even when he uses pastel colours, the effect of the colour is the same: a focus on the essential. And as lighting designers that’s what we should try to do, not just when we use colour but when we use light.”

Interview by Sam Phillips