Ian Macleod

I am a photographer, visual artist, and architectural historian living in Seattle.

My background is in photojournalism by education and trade, a subject I studied at Boston University, and worked in both the music and medical journalism fields. My work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Tacoma News Tribune, publications of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, several local news outlets, and a handful of album covers.

After returning to Seattle and a stint in the tech sector, I turned to fine art photography, and was accepted as a member of Gallery 110 in 2014-15. In addition to three shows there, I have participated in exhibitions nationwide.

My photographic interests shifted from documenting people and events to documenting places and buildings. In 2019, I completed my Master's degree in architecture at the University of Washington with a professional certificate in historic preservation. While there, I studied large-format architectural photography and HABS documentation, as well as digital and hand fabrication.

Much of my work is in chemistry-based black-and-white film. It is a visceral, hands-on medium, with equal parts science, craft, and luck. 

To paraphrase the late Garry Winogrand, I photograph things to see what they look like. 

While I do not limit myself to one particular subject, my interest as of late is in the intersection of people and place,  and memory embodied by physical space. Drawing on my background in photojournalism and architecture, my work explores the changing built environment and how it is inhabited. The urban landscape is a cinematic experience that, through photography, is collapsed into a singular, recontextualized instant.

Two current long-term projects are tracing the history of development along Washington's suburban highways, and documenting Seattle's endangered midcentury structures.

email: ian@ianmphoto.com