INTERVIEW
Ashok Sinha
The photographer’s first book showcases his love for car culture and classic roadside architecture in Los Angeles.
Steve Fairclough drives by
Liz Jang
Ashok Sinha
Photographer and filmmaker
Ashok Sinha is an architecture and interiors photographer and filmmaker. He fell in love with architecture while working on a travel assignment that included shooting architect Oscar Niemeyer’s Niterói Contemporary Art Museum in Rio de Janeiro. Since then, Sinha has worked around the world on a variety of residential, workplace, commercial and educational projects, producing timeless images that capture a sense of place.
Sinha’s work has been shown in over 25 group exhibitions and two solo exhibitions. His images have been published in TheNewYorkTimes,Interior Design,ArchitecturalDigest and many others.
www.ashoksinha.com
www.gasandglamour.com
D uring the 1950s and early 1960s, under presidents Dwight D Eisenhower and John F Kennedy, America’s car industry boomed. Hand in hand with this, the rise of rock ’n’ roll, the space age, and beautiful roadside diners, bars, coffee shops and gas stations gave the US a sense of purpose and pride. Ashok Sinha has developed a passion for the car culture and the roadside architectural creations of this era, which is celebrated in his debut photo book, Gas and Glamour.
Although he is based in New York, Sinha made frequent visits to Los Angeles for over five years to research, visit and shoot most of the iconic roadside LA establishments that were still in business. The resulting book is an homage to the sheer beauty and originality of these buildings.
What circumstances led to you first photographing architecture?
In the beginning I started off shooting a lot of travel magazine work and stories. As a travel photographer you get to photograph various aspects – people, food, landscapes, architecture… You get to see the whole gamut.
Once, when I was photographing a story in Rio de Janeiro on Oscar Niemeyer’s museum, the Niterói, I was smitten. I was awestruck by it… just how the architecture spoke with the landscape, the positioning of it, the thought processes behind it and the sheer scale of it. That was the first museum that I ended up not going inside, only because I was so enamoured by photographing it. I had one day to shoot the story and by the time I was done [outside], it was time to leave. That got me starting to think about architecture. I started shooting assignments in architecture, and got more and more into it.