Nikola Olic

Nikola Olic is a Serbian photographer living and working in Dallas, Texas. He focuses on architectural photography and abstract structural quotes that reimagine architecture in playful, dimensionless and disorienting ways. His photography has appeared in publications and public and private collections around the world, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired Magazine, The Guardian Newspaper, BBC News, Forbes, Dezeen, USA Today and many others. Nikola moved to the United States in 1992, at the start of the civil war in Yugoslavia. He is a trained classical pianist, a computer science graduate from the University of Texas, and a competitive professional BMX bike rider. His current photography project started in New York City in 2012, staring at Frank Gehry’s ‘Spruce 8’ skyscraper from the Brooklyn Bridge, wondering what to do with that building, that photograph and himself.

Poetic Beauty of Architecture

Abstract structural photography offers playful re-imagination of what urban structures might represent, both in a real physical sense and a personal experimental one, drawing us closer to the cities we explore by assigning these structures a purpose and meaning that reflects us, our stories, and our histories.

Every photograph in this collection comes with a story, a brief commentary about the structure being photographed, its name, and the location where it was taken. offering a quick return to the real world in which the structure exists, of cars, noise, buildings and people, and is intended as a demystifying tool, reminding us that these structures — beautiful or otherwise — are among us on every corner, in cities we visit or cities where we live.

Through exploring their surroundings, urban structure give us the ability to, in essence, paint with architecture. By re-appropriating these urban entities as our colors and brushes, these guerrilla photography efforts help create new intellectual and philosophical visual spaces with equal parts formalism, precisionism and architectural abstraction.

Finally, to help anchor this collection within a broader international photographic context, it humbly exists in a space shaped by tranquil and comedic ideas of Luigi Ghirri, urban precision of Andreas Gursky, unpredictability and playfulness of Andre Kertesz, and architectural instincts and patience of the wonderful Michael Wolf.

To view more of ‘s work please visit their website.