The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is renaming its flagship Photographs Collection The Robert Elwall Photographs Collection in memory of its late curator.
Robert Elwall who passed away in March 2012 was a champion of architectural photography for over 30 years. Robert enjoyed a distinguished career as a curator, author, critic and lecturer. He built the RIBA’s Photographs Collection of over 1.5 million images, including the preservation of many important photographic archives previously at risk. In 2005, he created RIBApix, a digital image database that today has almost 70,000 images available to researchers and the public at large. Robert curated dozens of exhibitions exploring the relationship between architecture, photography and society in libraries, museums and galleries.
There will also be an accompanying exhibition, Robert Elwall: Building the Photographs Collection, curated by some of his friends and colleagues in the Photographs Collection, illustrating some of Robert’s many achievements with examples from the major archives he acquired for the RIBA as well as his books and other publications. The exhibition in the RIBA Library runs from 23 October to 10 November 2012.
