Building with Light explores the development of architectural photography and seeks to explain how and why particular photographs are taken. Featured buildings illustrate the trends and key themes that have developed since the invention of photography in the 1830s and include: Sir Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace (1851), photographed by Hugh Owen & Claude Marie-Ferrier; Daniel H. Burnham's Flatiron Building (1903), photographed by Alfred Stieglitz; Frank O. Gehry & Associates' Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (1997), photographed by Jeff Goldberg; and Richard Rogers Partnership's Millennium Dome (1997), photographed while under construction by Mark Power.

Six detailed essays investigate the early influence of architectural drawing; the growth of specialist photographic firms documenting the nineteenth-century building boom; the influence of photography on both architectural practice and history; the invention of halftone reproduction; the role of photography in the spread of Modernism; the impact of colour photography during the 1970s and 1980s; and the digital revolution of today.

Acclaimed photographers such as Eugène Atget, Hélène Binet, Frederick H. Evans, Lucien Hervé, Eric de Maré, Ezra Stoller and Thomas Ruff are studied alongside lesser-known photographers with a detailed analysis of their influences and how these are reflected in their work.