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"View Slideshow\n\nDutch photographer Iwan Baan, a rising star on the contemporary-art scene, made a splash in Los Angeles last week with the launch of his first solo show, \u201CThe Way We Live,\u201D at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery, running through April 13. The exhibition features a tantalizing sampler of Baan\u2019s work, ranging from images of avant-garde buildings by the likes of architects Zaha Hadid, Thomas Heatherwick, Rem Koolhaas, and Toyo Ito to ancient pilgrimage sites in Africa to an already iconic image of a Superstorm Sandy\u2013ravaged Manhattan. AD caught up with the itinerant artist on the eve of the opening.\n\nArchitectural Digest: How would you describe your sphere of interest?\n\nIwan Baan: My main concern is people and how they make spaces for themselves to live in. I\u2019m less interested in architecture per se than in the ways people inhabit it and what it says about the culture.\n\nAD: Does it bother you to be described as an architectural photographer?\n\nIB: Not really, but it\u2019s hard to compare what I do with what Julius Shulman or Ezra Stoller did. I start with architecture, but I am quickly distracted by all the things that surround it. Architecture becomes a way to frame an image, a background. I use it to tell a story about people.\n\nAD:How did you come to focus on architecture?\n\nIB: It was really by accident. I met Rem Koolhaas and began documenting his CCTV building in Beijing. I know this is a clich\u00E9 that all roads lead to Rem, but that\u2019s how it happened. I was trained as a documentary photographer and architecture just became my subject.\n\nAD: Where did the CCTV assignment lead you?\n\nIB:When I was in Beijing, I started working with Herzog &amp;amp; de Meuron, shooting the construction of the Olympic stadium. I am fascinated with the way these huge projects get built in China. You have thousands of workers from the countryside who have never seen a building more than a few stories tall, and they are making these giant, superhigh-tech projects. The juxtaposition of the workers\u2019 makeshift villages next to gleaming high-rises like CCTV is astonishing.\n\nAD:Tell us about the Torre David project.\n\nIB: I was in Caracas doing work with the design firm called Urban-Think Tank, and I heard about this skyscraper that had been abandoned during its construction by the largest bank in Venezuela. I immediately wanted to see it. Thousands of people had moved into the empty concrete shell, despite the lack of utilities. Because the legal status of the occupants is unclear, they were wary of outsiders. But once you got inside and gained their trust, they were so proud to show off the homes they had made out of nothing.\n\nAD: What\u2019s next for you?\n\nIB: I have been working on a project in India for the Kumbh Mela, a religious gathering that happens every 12 years. Eighty million people collect at the delta of the Ganges and make the world\u2019s largest pop-up city out of bamboo and fabric. It\u2019s an intensely visual experience, but about so much more than just design.\n\nClick here to see a selection of photographs from Baan\u2019s solo show at the Perry Rubinstein Gallery."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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