Eric de Maré (1910 – 2002) was a British photographer and author, described as one of the greatest British architectural photographers. I met him once, at a lecture at King’s in Cambridge. We swapped stories, he reassured me that architectural photography was the same monumental pain in the neck for him as it was for me “I once spent two days in my car waiting for the rain to stop in Sheffield, 5 minutes of light was all I got”.
He asserted that photography and, more importantly the photographer, was key to a critical appreciation of architecture. In Gerald Woods’ 1972 book ‘Art without Boundaries’ de Maré wrote: “The photographer is perhaps the best architectural critic, for, by felicitous framing and selection, he can communicate direct and powerful comments both in praise and protest: he can also discover and reveal architecture where none was intended.”
He joined the Architectural Press, becoming acting editor of The Architects’ Journal in 1943. A year earlier, he had published Britain Rebuilt, a book that reflected a country in ruins, preparing itself for reconstruction. de Maré understood that photography was not merely about capturing what was there, but about revealing the truth of a place. He believed industrial buildings, then becoming redundant and obsolete, held an unintended beauty—one worth cherishing and preserving.
In 1950 The Architectural Review commissioned him, he was sent across England to document early industrial sites. The result was The Functional Tradition in Early Industrial Buildings, published in 1958. Warehouses, mills, pumping stations—photographed not as mere relics of the past, they were examples of human ingenuity, endurance, and function. The work made a huge impact on me. de Maré’s photographs, along with the work of the other truly great British architectural photographer, Edwin Smith, became my Lodestones as I negotiated my early career behind the lens.
In 2012, bounced around by the comedy of trying to work in London as it frantically prepared itself for the Olympics, I ducked out and made for the Derwent Valley. A couple of days without a client, with a little time, and the memory of de Maré’s photographs of the mills. I could wander aimlessly, free to explore my own editorial notions.
So here are my images of Derwent Valley Mills. Made on a Linhof 679, a monorail camera with perspective controlling movements that de Maré and Smith would have recognised, but equipped with an all singing all dancing £40K Phase One digital back, that would have left them speechless. The images post processed in Capture One and Photoshop to give a faint approximation of de Maré’s wonderful charcoal black prints.
Presented here 12 years later, I’m still very fond of them.
