Aaron Dougherty Photography

Works

Commissions

Bio

Aaron Dougherty studied architecture at the University of Kansas, completing a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design, and a Bachelor’s in Architecture.  He studied sculpture for a semester at Kansas City Art Institute, and completed certification in secondary education at Avila College, Kansas City.

He is a registered architect, in active practice from 1983 to 2009, and taught one year of high school chemistry.  In 2009 he began Aaron Dougherty Photography, freelancing primarily in architectural and interiors photography.  

His work has been exhibited at venues in and around Kansas City, and has been published in periodicals including Fraction Magazine, El Croquis, Architect, Architectural Record, Architecture-Boston and Photo Review.  

His photography was shown at the A’23 AIA National Conference; SanFrancisco—and in 2016 at the GAA Foundation’s Time-Space-Existence exhibit at theBiennale di Venezia, Italy.

Dougherty currently lives and works in Kansas City, MO.

CV

Education

Certification in Secondary Education, Chemistry; Avila College; Kansas City:  1995
Sculpture Studio; Kansas City Art Institute:  1987
Bachelor of Architecture; University of Kansas:  1983
Bachelor of Environmental Design; University of Kansas:  1982

Professional

Aaron Dougherty Photography:  2009 — present
Architect (active practice):  1982 — 2009, registered 1990
Taught high school chemistry:  1996 — 1997

Exhibitions

A’23 AIA National Conference; San Francisco:  2023
Time Space Existence; Venice Architectural Biennale; Venice, Italy:  2016

Solo and Two-Person Shows

Grain; Kansas City Artists Coalition; Kansas City:  Coming in October 2025
Grain; Digital Art Wall at Commerce Bank, Kansas City: through March 31st, 2025
Funnelcake; KC Arts Gallery; Kansas City:  2015
Painted; All Souls Unitarian Church Gallery; Kansas City:  2013
Hand; Underground at Kansas City Artists Coalition; Kansas City:  2010
Junkyard; Arts Council of Metropolitan KC; Kansas City:  2010
Junkyard; Plenum Space Gallery; Kansas City:  2009
Centering; Corridor Art Gallery; Kansas City:  2004

Group Shows

Kansas City Flatfiles Exhibition; H&R Block ArtSpace, Kansas City:  2016
Annual Auction; Kansas City Artists Coalition:  2012
Gallery 300 @ HOK; Kansas City:  2008
Holiday-a-Go-Go; Byron C. Cohen Gallery; Kansas City:  2003

Publications

Architecture engagement calendar; Rizzoli:  2012, 2010, 2008
ArchitectureBoston Magazine, Summer Issue:  2011

Press

Viewpoints: Uncommissioned Work of Architectural Photographers, by John Hill; World-Architects eMagazine:  2013 March 25

Awards

AIA National Photography Competition:  Merit Award + two Honorable Mentions:  2023
AIA National Photography Competition:  2013, 2010, 2008

Please write me HERE for a price list and availability information. 


Prints

Prints of any image you see in the Works pages are available for purchase.

All are printed in-house, in limited editions using archival pigment-based inks on Canson Platine — a 100% cotton rag, acid-free, museum quality, 310 gsm paper.  Most images are printed on demand.

Framing

Also available.  Let me know and I can recommend options.
Very, very incomplete and in no particular order:

Architecture

Directories

In General

Words are able to represent only the tiniest fraction of possible thought.  They can only provide waypoints in a continuous spectrum of meaning, and then only by convention.  We can all speak the word ‘joy’ but that single syllable only just begins to communicate one individual’s actual meaning or emotion to the mind of another.  And more to the point of photography: words have very limited power to explain or describe images.  Words come from the brain’s left hemisphere, images are ‘seen’ and recognized in the right.

And yet the art world demands written statements.  Best I can do is this:

I find words, concepts, and statements are antipathetic to my work as a photographer.  I personally struggle to silence the verbal narrative that happens involuntarily in my mind as I look at the world.  My eye and right hemisphere will find some view or scene that resonates in a way I can’t verbally describe, so I willfully attempt not to try.  And to conceptualize an artistic goal in advance, or to rationalize the capture afterwards destroys that wordless experience.

The exercise I employ most in my work is photographing buildings, walls, telephone poles that aren’t pretty, aren’t ugly (to my mind, anyway) — just unremarkable.  Meaningless scenes that posses no intrinsic beauty or quality, represent no particular issue or subject.  Visual Rorschach Tests, or koans.  The more I can strip away the distracting noise of my verbal left hemisphere, the better my visual right hemisphere can operate.  And these commonplace scenes hold my eye for reasons that, say, a blue sky does not.

I may eventually add ‘subject’ as an element in my work (and have recently, see: Grain) — I can imagine a day when my mind is quiet enough to see an image that contains ‘meaning’ or even a ‘message’, but for the time being I will continue with these wordless meditations.

Formalism

“Remember, that a picture, before it is a picture of a battle horse, a nude woman, or some story, is essentially a flat surface covered in colours arranged in a certain order.”
—Maurice Denis

More HERE.


all images and text copyright Aaron Dougherty