Architectural Photographer Tim Hursley to Present Lecture on Nov. 16

Tim Hursley

Philip Johnson's Study.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Tim Hursley will present a lecture titled "Tim Hursley: Architectural Photographer" at 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 16, in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall, on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville, as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design lecture series.

Hursley is the founder of The Arkansas Office, an architectural photography studio in Little Rock. Originally from Detroit, he apprenticed in architectural photography there with Balthazar Korab, a Hungarian photographer, starting in 1972. Hursley continued to apprentice with Korab until moving to Little Rock in 1980 to start his own studio.

Early in his career, Hursley was able to photograph Andy Warhol's last Factory on Madison and 34th Street in New York City, from 1982-87. The American Institute of Architects awarded Hursley an Honor Award for his photography in 1990, and, that same year, Ivan Karp hosted an exhibit of his Nevada Brothel photographs at OK Harris gallery in New York City. Hursley revisited the Nevada brothels in 2001 and published a collection titled Brothels of Nevada: Candid Views of America's Legal Sex Industry (Princeton Architectural Press, 2003).

In 1994, Hursley began documenting the work of the architect Samuel Mockbee's Rural Studio, which he continues today. The result is two books, Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency (Princeton Architectural Press, 2002) and Proceed and Be Bold (Princeton Architectural Press, 2005). He is working on a third volume now to celebrate 20 years of the Rural Studio.

During his lecture, Hursley plans on showing photographs from his 35-year career spent photographing architecture. He has worked closely with architects such as Moshe Safdie, Gunnar Birkerts, Fay Jones, Antoine Predock, Mack Scogin, I.M. Pei, Marlon Blackwell, Yoshio Taniguchi and Sam Mockbee. He will also show images from magazine assignments from the architectural press and from road trips, which included documenting brothels in Nevada and polygamist communities in Utah.

Institutions that commissioned Hursley to document their architecture during the museum boom expansion included The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa by Moshe Safdie (1992), the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, by Frank Gehry (1997), the Museum of Modern Art in New York by Yoshio Taniguchi (2004-2008), the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas, by Renzo Piano (2002-2012), The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery by Norman Foster (2007), the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art by Steven Holl (2007) and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem by James Carpenter (2011-2012).

Hursley continues to take architectural photographs, but he works on other projects as well. He is currently documenting funeral homes in small towns in the South, as well as working with time-lapse surveillance cameras on industrial artifacts in Alabama and Arkansas.

The public is invited to attend. Admission is free, with limited seating.

For more information, contact 479-575-4704 or fayjones.uark.edu.