Landscape architect Alan Ward, FASLA, has channeled his love of photography into a second career spanning nearly 40 years. He took his first photograph in 1978, the same year that he started working at the Watertown, Massachusetts architecture firm Sasaki Associates, using a large-format view camera with a tripod to capture an image of Cambridge’s Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Ward’s photography work is currently being featured in a retrospective of sorts at Washington, D.C.’s National Building Museum. Luminous Landscapes, which will run through September, showcases the history, evolution, and sheer beauty of American landscape design, as well as Ward’s own keen eye and skill with a camera. We chatted with Ward about his transition from film to digital photography, and about some of his favorite landscapes.

Can you tell me about the cameras that you used to take these photos?

The cameras are actually on display in the exhibit. There’s a 4x5 view camera—this is an old-style camera and a kind of a technology that originated in the late 19^th century, and architectural photographers used it until being supplanted by digital cameras. Most of the photographs are with a 4x5 view camera. In more recent years I started using a medium format camera, with a Hasselblad 2-and-a-quarter-inch negative. I also used a panoramic camera, which is also medium-format. It uses roll film, but three frames of a 2-and-a-quarter-inch negative.

The last two sites in the exhibit were done more recently with a digital camera. All of the landscapes that were done on film were with either the 4x5 view camera or the medium-format. I would have the negatives processed and make a print in the darkroom that met my requirements for lightening, darkening and cropping. Once I got the print I liked, I would send it with an overlay of notes on what I did to manipulate the print to a master printer who would scan the negative, make adjustments to match my print, and send me a proof that was printed digitally. He would then make a final print.

So, what you’re actually seeing are digital prints. The original, in most cases, is from a negative. It’s a hybrid process.

Can you tell me a little bit about the concept behind this exhibit?

Early on [in my career,] I was asked to photograph certain designers’ work for an exhibition, and that was the work of [landscape architects] Dan Kiley and Beatrix Farrand. And then, in the mid-'90s, I had an opportunity to do a book on my photography, so I took what I had and I supplemented it with sites that I had selected.

The idea is that these are some of the most significant landscape designs in the country. Either they were a new project type, like Riverside, Illinois, the planned community, or Blue Ridge Parkway, or Mount Auburn cemetery, or the University of Virginia. Either they were new project types, or they were just extremely influential as designs. For example, the Miller Garden in Columbus, Indiana, was a very important design in the modern era. Prospect Park [in Brooklyn, NY] was a significant early park by Olmsted, but also influential in design terms.

So, is this exhibit a retrospective of photographs of landscapes that you’ve taken over your whole career?

Yes, it is. I selected photographs that I thought were the most interesting and the most compelling images. At the same time, I had to tell a story about the evolution of landscape design and landscape architecture in this country. The gallery spaces were three rooms that fit nicely into three periods of landscape design—I think that’s a reasonable way to break down the evolution of landscape design in this country.

So, there are works from the 18^th century through 1900 in the first room from the “pre-professional era,” to 1900, to the conclusion of Frederick Law Olmsted’s career. The last project in that period is Biltmore, one of his last significant projects. And then there’s 1900 to 1950 in the second room, the height of the “country place” era—this was when there was new affluence in the country, and owners engaged landscape architects to create remarkable landscapes and gardens outside of cities.

There also were new project types in that era, like the Blue Ridge Parkway, which was done in the ’30s. 1950 to the present is the third period. There are hints of the rise of Modernism in the second room, in the last project, Naumkeag. Modernism emerges after the war with the Miller House, and then there’s some significant modern works like Gas Works Park in Seattle, which reclaims an industrial site and turns it into a public park, and keeps some of the old industrial gas works as kind of sculpture and the sense of the past. There is another of Kiley’s project, Fountain Place in Dallas. It is an oasis, a water garden in the city. The exhibit concludes with the September 11 Memorial in New York.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Maybe it’s worth mentioning, one other thing that I was trying to do here: you look at a lot of contemporary photography, and a lot of the focus has been a critique of the built environment, for example of suburban sprawl. I recently saw exhibitions on nuclear test sites and the resulting ravaged landscapes, and a show of old mining landscapes. There’s a lot of photography that is highly critical of the built environment.

What I’ve tried to show is that it’s possible to build far more wisely, and that there are examples of really positive relationships between designed landscapes and our culture. These are kind of quintessential examples of successful relationships between the built environment and our culture.