Forty Hopes, Forty Futures
When Isabel Allen rang to ask if I’d photograph the AJ 40 Under 40, I was somewhat apprehensive. At the time, the commission felt slightly surreal, it followed on the back of 2004’s ‘In Practice’, a phenomenally successful series of portraits of architects in their workspace. Originally intended as a seductive tool to encourage architects to commission photographs with people in them. A shocking conceit at the time.
The project promised a parade of rising architectural stars, Isabel, ever the strategist, had a plan. She wanted someone who could tell the stories of these young ambitious teams. More importantly, she needed an ally in the room during the judging process: someone to help nudge the conversation toward the lesser-known names, the experimental practices that hadn’t yet built much but whose ideas shimmered with promise. So I found myself not only photographing the judging committee, but also making approving noises as submission came up, a curious liminal space between witness and participant.
The commission itself was a logistical marathon. The timescale was absurdly short, days, not weeks. We had perhaps a fortnight to photograph forty people scattered across the country. I remember early starts, late nights, snap judgements on how to make my snaps. Some days I made four or five visits, a blur of pocket offices, converted warehouses, risky hit and run shots in Parliament Sq.
Somehow it seemed appropriate, everyone I met was in motion
Back at the office, the turnaround was brutal. Isabel’s team was assembling the AJ’s now-legendary 234-page issue in real time, layouts were waiting for files as I was still shooting them. There was no luxury of perfection, only the pressure of momentum. But that urgency lent the photographs a strange vitality. They weren’t meditated portraits of legacy; they were fragments of becoming.
Looking back, what endures is not the exhaustion but the constellation of relationships that began in that compressed, caffeine-fuelled moment. Those faces, became a generation I’ve continued to photograph, collaborate with, and learn from ever since. What began as an editorial assignment turned into a lifelong conversation about architecture, image, and time.
To watch so many of them flourish, to see names once scribbled on contact sheets now carved into the fabric of cities, has been one of the quiet joys of my career. The 40 Under 40 wasn’t just a snapshot; it was the beginning of an unfolding dialogue between architects and those of us who try to translate their worlds into light.
In the end, I think Isabel was right. The photographs mattered less as documentation and more as advocacy, an act of belief, of saying: these are the ones to watch.
Rob Gregory – Architect | DSDHA | Tom Holbrook | Phil Coffey | Francesco Draisci | AOC Architecture Ltd | Daisy Froud | Ben Addy | 6a architects | Catherine Burd | Amin Taha | dMFK | Patrick Lynch
