He's always preferred being behind the camera, being the creator, not the subject, and rejecting the myriads of 'appearances' offered.

Travelling globally, Richard was deemed ‘the seeing eye of architecture', as written by Janet Abrams in Blueprint magazine in 1991.

For over forty years, Richard Bryant has quietly helped create a legacy for many international names with which his own legacy is entwined.

In an era when everyone has a camera in their pocket, as well as colour, 24hr news and social media feeds, it's important to see Richard and his early work within the context of the time.

The mid-1980s were a short-lived period of optimism and creativity.

The 1970s had seen high inflation and slow economic growth in much of the western world. In the UK, unemployment reached post-war highs and in 1979 the mortgage rate reached 17%

September 1976 Richard's first commission for the AJ. The entire magazine was black and white

The 1980s ushered in the liberating potential of technological innovation, including the sale of home computers.

They also started to see in colour – in 1981, the design world saw the birth of Memphis and postmodernism. Germany saw a boom in museum building.

In parts of the western world - the UK and America - the politics were changing and success and visibility mattered.

State of the art technology: Lloyds of London 1986

Architecture became part of corporate branding.

'Architecture from the 1980s became about power and ambition'
Jonathan Glancey, The Guardian, 11 Sep 2011.

It was an exuberant and provocative time, including for architecture.

Architecture and some architects became household names and in 1986 the Royal Academy of Arts in London held its first and only main exhibition on architecture: New British Architecture: Foster, Rogers & Stirling.

Contemporary architecture and interiors were shared, via photography, in a myriad of publications worldwide. Books and magazines, both trade and consumer, prospered.

For over ten years, architecture and interiors were the ubiquitous subject matter at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Publishers like Taschen seemed to be releasing a new design book every couple of weeks.

When a new building was opened, outside of a news story everyone waited, often over a month to see it properly published with independent photography and text.

Menil Art Gallery Houston USA Renzo Piano 1986

In contrast to today, with the ubiquitous phone camera in the pocket, with its self-correcting colour balance and in-built Photoshop tricks, the architectural photographer in the late C20th struggled with heavy equipment and temperamental film; film batches that reacted to different light sources turning the image green, blue or magenta, unless the correcting gels could be fitted on the camera - or in some cases all the light fittings in a space.

Menil is white. - Did we get our colour-correcting right or did we need to adjust? Test sheets were sent to the recommended processing lab in Houston. They came back looking as if they had been processed in dirty dishwater. No help only added stress – we had to keep going, trusting Richard's experience, and take the film back to our London Lab.

But taking unexposed film through customs risked having the images wiped, completely deleted, unless a sympathetic customs official agreed not to X-ray the exposed, but not processed, film boxes. Several times, we feared not being allowed on to our plane.

Richard became a consummate diplomat.

There was no digital, there was no Photoshop.

In 1989, Vitra opened the Design Museum, designed by Frank Gehry. A first for Gehry outside North America and a major contributor to establishing his reputation, similar to Zaha Hadid's Vitra Fire Station in 1993. These buildings made news internationally and beyond the architectural fraternity. There was anticipation for the next Vitra building.

A lesser known image inside the Vitra Fire Station by Zaha Hadid 1993

This first-class stamp commissioned by Royal Mail for the Millennium looks simple and belies its production. Stamps must be approved by the Crown months before they are issued.

Tate Modern and the interior of the glazed gallery was a building site. Dozens of lights had to be bought and installed and miles of cables connected amongst the workmen's gear and dusty interior. Film floodlights were used for a glow on the chimney. The 'Swiss Light' had not been installed.

On the plus side, if we'd had Photoshop perhaps we would have been asked to add the the 'Swiss Light' installation that was to top the chimney. Installed for the opening and damaged in a storm in 2007, it was removed and never replaced.

Richard transitioned to digital in the mid-2000s with the book by Richard for Rizzoli, London, and he has been shooting digital ever since - the cameras becoming smaller as the quality has increased.

This is a glimpse into some of the photographic challenges to be overcome and a background to many of the images in the book ‘Richard Bryant’, written by Martin Caiger-Smith and Valeria Carullo, foreword by Eva Jiřičná and published by Lund Humphries and supported by IRIS Ceramica.

More about that next time.

Musings from my life in photography and architecture ©Lynne Bryant
All photographs ©Richard Bryant. They may not be downloaded, scraped or copied in anyway without prior permission from Richard Bryant and negotiation of a licence.
Thanks to Capture UK for their DAM system and licensing.