The following is a short excerpt of a longer review that I prepared for use in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Architectural Education. You can find examples of Schiff’s panoramic photographs on his website.

The recently published Civic Architecture Across America: Extraordinary Views (2025) by Thomas R. Schiff provides unexpected perspectives on buildings and environments that are often familiar to the point of being overlooked.

Produced to accompany a national tour in celebration of the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, this work forces a reassessment of what we think we know about America’s statehouses, city halls, county courthouses, monuments and more. Schiff’s use of a Hulcherama 360° panoramic camera provides a view that is at once in front, beside and behind the viewer.

There is an artistic exploration in Schiff’s work not always seen in traditional architectural photography of these same subjects. As Alex Nyerges of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts writes, Schiff is “one of the few, if not the best, to ever take an incredibly unforgiving type of technically challenging camera, designed for other than aesthetic purposes, and turn its lens into a vehicle for capturing the essence of beauty in architecture.” Thomas Schiff and his collaborators have produced a striking and often stunning collection that speaks to the importance, beauty, and—some might add—fragility of the buildings that both serve and represent our American experiment in democracy.

More to come . . .

DJB