Practising from the late 1950’s until his death in 1980, Henk Snoek was admired for his “facility of composing the most complex and intricate subject matter into a picture of great scale, formal clarity and tonal contrasts”. Combining an unerring eye for composition with an infinite patience in waiting to catch the most favourable light, Snoek’s photographs are characterised by their strong sense of drama, simple yet forceful lines and employment of high contrast. Working predominantly in Britain, his wonderfully evocative images of Basil Spence’s Coventry Cathedral are amongst his most iconic works. He later became the predominant recorder of the boom period of British construction in the Middle East in the 1970’s.

The Snoek archive in the RIBA British Architectural Library Photographs Collection consists of 40,000 black and white negatives and colour transparencies representing the photographer’s prolific career. This publication provides a comprehensive and fascinating overview of one of the most complete and significant archives of architectural photography in the 20th Century.