From A Dream: Patricia H Clarke’s Architectural Photography

Patricia Houghton Clarke sent me a nice set of photographs of her architectural work. It’s dreamy, borders on romantic. Here’s a selection and her statement about her work.

Memories of my childhood home are dreams in which I wander the rooms and observe their shapes, noticing light as it enters the space and dances across the walls. I hear voices; I touch the solid plaster walls; I fly down the narrow spiral stairway to the secret room below.

I spend my free time alone, wandering the streets nearby, observing homes, lives, shape and form.

In later years I traveled the world over, always observing culture and life in the form of structures that humans create and inhabit. I have lived and worked in widely varying spaces, including bamboo huts in Java, campers, grand homes, humble rooms, family spaces, tents, bare-bones cabins.

I have observed pygmy leaf dwellings, visited Saharan Berber tents and shacks in the slums of Asuncion with my children, sat in a Congolese hut by the fire holding the baby of new friends with whom I couldn’t speak a word, and drank rice wine sitting under shrunken heads in a long-house with tattooed former headhunters.

My love for space and structure — what we call “Architecture” — has been the foundation for my visual work and involvement in my community. In addition to photographing architectural spaces, I have physically created interior and exterior spaces, co-founded and managed a self-help affordable housing non-profit in California, participated in the construction of a large outdoor amphitheater , and supported the preservation of our nearby wilderness.

My fascination for, and appreciation of structures of all kinds, shapes and sizes never wanes. Built form is a literal and figurative doorway into humanity; the urge to express our individuality or commonality apparent in every fragment of wood and stone, roof tile and rafter.

About the photographer:

For more of Patricia’s work. please visit her website