Black and white photography inspiration by Moises Levy

As an architect, Moises Levy is singularly concerned with the manner in which light both defines and interacts with spatial environments. The same dynamic is at work in his coolly elegant, enigmatic landscape photography. Whether he’s focused on a line of saplings reflected in still water, a lonely tree bearing witness to the passing darkness, or huge rocks sculpted by time into strange and wondrous shapes, Levy treats natural forms as if they were carefully designed manmade constructions.

“Being educated as an architect gets the mind used to looking for geometrical relationships in everything, and to perceive the effect of light in space,” Levy says. “These are determining factors in my photography. Whenever I arrange an image the geometrical concepts that I use as an architect are unconsciously present. Since I was young, I have felt a special attraction towards spatial conception and its relationship with light; when I walked around new cities I was fascinated by this mixture.”

Yet the mathematical precision with which Levy invests his compositions is balanced by a corresponding warmth and lyricism. He frequently uses long exposures to conjure a serene, almost spiritual quality of light that softens the textures of trees and rocks, and lends a haunting luminescence to the bodies of water that appear with such frequency in his work. For Levy, water represents life, purity and tranquility.

Levy’s landscape imagery is further distinguished by a beguiling simplicity that borders on minimalism. He’s not looking to cram a lot into the frame. Just the opposite, in fact. It’s as if he is trying to see how few visual elements he can get away with and still create a sense of mystery and complexity. Levy tries to “distill” reality in order to evoke the essence of a particular place. He believes that this stripped-down aesthetic works to counterbalance our image-saturated world, his photographs offered up as oases of simplicity amidst the visual discordance.

For more black and white photography inspiration by Moises Levy, please visit his website here or check out his flickr photostream right here