Northern Dispensary, 2013, color photograph.

 

Although Marc Yankus has been taking pictures of buildings since the late nineties, he doesn’t regard him­self as an architectural photographer, and he doesn’t shoot like one, either. Whereas architec­tural photographers use special lenses to eliminate perspective distortion—to make parallel lines look parallel—Yankus achieves this effect by digital means. That is all he will say about his methods. Solving the riddle of perspective was, in his words, “a necessity in the work”; maintaining the mystery of his process is important to the illusionary spirit of these images.

Among photographers of buildings, Yankus cites the German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher as an influence on his work, with their imposing water towers, grain elevators, and silos. Other influences include M. C. Escher, de Chirico, and Robert Frank.

Yankus isolates his buildings, applying a sandy texture to the space around them so that the background recedes and f…