Architecture has, from the very earliest
days of photography, proved to be a rich source of subject matter. Buildings
were popular subjects for nineteenth century photographers for the simple
reason that they did not move, so there was no blurring due to the long
exposure times needed then. As technology improved the genre became less
popular and took something of a back seat, being used mainly as a tool to
document the changes in our surroundings. However, as the twentieth century
progressed, photographers started to use architectural photography to explore
changes in society and ideology, the differences between public and private
space and the interaction between the buildings and the landscape that
surrounds them and/or the people who use them. This exhibition brings together
the work of eighteen photographers, active from the 1930s onwards, who have
made some of the more important contributions to modern architectural
photography.
This major exhibition was well
laid out on two floors of the Barbican Art Gallery. Berenice Abbott’s beautiful
1930s monochrome images of Manhattan’s transition into a skyscraper city
provided a very positive start. Abbott’s spectacular views of gleaming
modernity (see for example Image 1) were
in sharp contrast to Walker Evans’ photographs of poor workers and their
run-down, architecturally mundane homes and town buildings, taken during the
great depression. Mundanity was a key feature of the concept-driven work of the
“New Topographics” photographers from the 1970s, so it is a little surprising
to see Bernd and Hilda Becher as the only representatives of this movement,
with their (now familiar) series of water towers.
Image 1: Manhattan
(Berenice Abbott)
Other photographers whose work is
represented and with whom I was familiar included Ed Ruscha (parking lots
photographed from above), Andreas Gursky (his famous photograph of the giant
Montparnasse tower block in Paris) and Nadav Kander, whose atmospheric views of
architecture and people along the Yangtse River in China combine the genres of
architecture, social documentary and landscape photography to good effect.
Simon Norfolk, whose documentation of the war-torn ruins left by the war
in Afghanistan highlight another aspect of architectural photography, was the
sole UK representative in the exhibition.
A couple of the galleries showed
work by photographers, who collaborated with architects during the design and
construction of their buildings. Luigi Ghirri’s collaboration with architect
Aldo Rossi produced some imaginative work, which was showcased here. However, I
was even more impressed by the atmospheric monochrome prints, produced by
Helene Binet (e.g. Image 2), of
Liebeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin. Was this because the museum itself (which
I have visited) has a dramatic design (to reflect the bleak nature of the story
that its exhibits tell) or because Binet has done an excellent job of bringing
out the character of the building? I suppose that the answer is “a bit of
both”. I would have liked to have seen more than the handful of prints of her work on
display here.
Image 2: Liebeskind’s
Jewish Museum, Berlin (Helene Binet)
I had previously rather scorned
Hiroshi Sugimoto’s deliberately blurred images of iconic buildings, such as the
World Trade Centre, pre- “9-11”. However, I have to admit that his large prints
on display at the exhibition, which reduce their subject matter to its most
basic, abstract form, eliminating their surroundings, do have a much more powerful
impact when seen on this scale.
The exhibition demonstrates that
the relationship between photography and architecture is rather more complex
than I had first imagined. A very broad range of subject matter is on display
and the curators have tried to cover as many different areas as they could,
within the genre of architectural photography (too many to mention in this
review!). Inevitably, viewers will enjoy and take inspiration from the work of some contributors and find less to intrigue them from others' work. Whilst the broad range of
themes show-cases the genre of architectural photography, it inevitably leads
to a somewhat “bitty” feel to the exhibition as a whole. On the other hand, I
can’t think of another photographic genre that could be reviewed in a single
exhibition without (at least) similar compromises having to be made.
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