Outlets is an essay about the interactions between minimalism, labor, and architectural photography. While simultaneously serving as a project architect on a large construction site and reading critic Kyle Chayka’s Longing for Less, I wondered: who and what gets erased – literally and figuratively – in sleek, sparse images of contemporary architecture?  I published the essay under the pseudonym “An Architect” in Log 51

When we emulate minimalism in architecture, the ideation – object and space – is primary. But when we prioritize this ideation, we’re valuing power, by which I mean our clients’ power to organize and command capital and our own power to organize and command space. In doing so, we are to some extent erasing labors – plural here for the myriad complex and collaborative types of work that make architecture possible […] Why are the photos of our projects so often pushed toward an inherited art-world aesthetic over half a century old? It pleases us, but to what end? Our economy can and does redact workers every day. Maybe our projects and images shouldn’t.