CONTENTS

MODERNISM REVISITEDJames Welling Thomas RuffLuisa LambriLake VereaFrédéric ChaubinAlex HartleyTodd EberleGeert GoirisTheo SimpsonHiroshi Sugimoto

FICTIONAL WORLDSFilip DujardinPhilipp SchaererJosef SchulzNicolas Grospierre Sabine Bitter & Helmut WeberDionisio Gonzalez Idris Khan

Coming of Age Pedro Gadanho

Biographical index Acknowledgements

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Introduction Elias RedstoneShooting Spaces Kate Bush

MANUFACTURING ICONOGRAPHYAnnie LeibovitzMichael WeselyHélène Binet Iwan BaanWalter NiedermayrAndrea BosioPaolo RosselliJames ReeveJose Dávila

CITYSCAPES OF CHANGEThomas StruthOlivo BarbieriMichael WolfWolfgang TillmansMichele NastasiCatherine OpieThomas WeinbergerNuno CeraSohei NishinoRichard WentworthSze Tsung LeongYves Marchand & Romain Meffre

MAN-ALTERED LANDSCAPES Bas PrincenChristoph Morlinghaus Center for Land Use InterpretationArmin Linke Nils NormanCyprien GaillardPeter BialobrzeskiRichard RossEric TabuchiNadav KanderAndreas Gursky

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INTRODUCTION

ELIAS REDSTONE

‘Everyone will have noticed how much easier it is to get hold of a painting, more particularly a sculpture, and especially architecture, in a photograph than in reality.’

Walter Benjamin

‘I agree that all good photographs are documents, but I also know that all documents are certainly not good photographs. Furthermore, a good photographer does not merely document, he probes the subject, he “uncovers” it…’

Berenice Abbott

From the invention of photography, architecture has proved itself a worthy muse for photographers and artists alike. Early photographers exploited architecture’s static nature to allow the long exposures necessary to create an image. As camera technology developed, architecture retained its interest as a subject for professional and amateur photographers alike. Today, digital photography and the Internet have made the taking and dissemination of images more immediate and prolific than ever and architecture has proved to be an enduring subject. At the time of writing, a search for #architecture on Instagram returned over 5 million photographs; a vast databank of architectural imagery seeking the validation of likes and reposts.

In photography, architecture found a partner in crime to disseminate its message; allowing it to be studied, communicated and promoted to audiences far and wide. To paraphrase Benjamin, photography made architecture technologically reproducible as a work of art. While architects employ many techniques to communicate their ideas about space, such as drawing, model making and writing, photography provides the only ‘truthful’ document that can be widely disseminated.

The public image of a building is often the one experienced through a photograph and photography has proved itself to be adept at bringing attention, and indeed fame, to architecture. As Mexican architect Lorenzo Rocha wrote ‘An image of a certain building is, in fact, part of its architecture, since most people who learn about a building may have only seen it in a photograph… the photography of architecture has such a symbolic power that it predetermines, and sometimes even transforms people’s approach to a built work.’

The genre of ‘architectural photography’ – a technical and commercial practice to photograph buildings – emerged in the 20th century with its own rules and codes. For example, the practice encourages the use of controlled perspective to capture straight lines and a wide depth of field to keep the whole frame in focus. As a profession, architectural photographers are for the most part commissioned by architects to promote their work to clients, the public and the architectural press. The work is therefore intended to be highly desirable and often removes any imperfections, criticality or, indeed, people. Digital photography and post-production software has only increased the flawless appearance of most architectural imagery.

This publication seeks to showcase work that asserts a more critical relationship between photography and architecture. It presents a broad spectrum of approaches to considering architecture in contemporary and photographic practices – from Annie Leibovitz’s celebration of the construction worker to Nadav Kander’s documentation of immense infrastructural projects in China – where the architecture acts as a protagonist through which to explore wider social and cultural themes.

Photography is presented here as a tool to research and understand our built

environment and, in turn, to reveal truths about how we live today. If architecture is a physical manifestation of society’s aspirations and needs, then a study of architecture can offer an insight into the society that creates and occupies it. This survey is not, however, looking to establish or imply a movement. The featured artists and photographers have various agendas and motivations, but are connected through particular works – whether commissioned or self-initiated – which cast an inquisitive and critical gaze towards architecture. For some artists, the works reproduced are the recent output in a longer, on-going exploration of the built environment. For others, they represent a commission or seminal project that casts new light on the study or understanding of architecture today.

The works presented in this survey were all taken in the 21st century, and follow a rich history of architecture inspiring and provoking artists. Too often architecture and photography are kept arm’s length; a situation exasperated by the structure of art museums and cultural institutions that categorise and departmentalise the disciplines separately. Essays by curators Kate Bush and Pedro Gadanho explore the enduring relationship between architecture and photography in art practice and architectural discourse respectively. Kate Bush traces the history of architecture in art photography from the portraits of modernising cities by Eugene Atget and Berenice Abbott, through to the seminal New Topographics movement and the more recent shift to digital photography and image manipulation.

Pedro Gadanho explores the role photography has played in architectural practice, initially as a tool for documenting and studying classical buildings through to the adoption of photography by modern architects as the crucial media for circulating their projects and ideas. Gadanho expores the

genesis of architectural photography – as a professional discipline and also as a research methodology employed by architects such as Erich Mendelson and Le Corbusier – and the problems and contradictions of considering photography within the realm of architecture.

This book is separated into five chapters. ‘Manufacturing Iconography’ looks at the role photography plays in creating the public image of a building, from construction through occupation. ‘Cities in Change’ addresses contemporary experiences of cities, from mass urbanising nations to post-industrial regions in decline. ‘Infrastructure and Landscape’ analyses the impact of engineering and infrastructure on the surface of the Earth. ‘Modernism Revisited’ looks back at a defining moment for architecture and how it is being reappraised and reinterpreted through a contemporary gaze. The final chapter, ‘Fictional Worlds’, looks at how photographers are manipulating photographic images to such an extent that they are creating new, fantasy architecture. Together, they incorporate and address a range of approaches in contemporary photography for looking at the physical world we have built around us.

E lias RedstoneIntroduction

E lias RedstoneIntroduction

ICONOGRAPHYMANUFACTURING

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Annie Lieb owit zManufacturing Iconography

Annie Leibovitz documented the construction of the New York Times Tower, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, between 2005 and 2006. Commissioned by the developer Forest City Ratner Companies, Building The Times can be seen as a homage to the 1930s photographs of the Empire State Building by Lewis Hine and the Chrysler Building by Margaret Bourke-White. Celebrated for her portrait photography, Leibo-vitz’s images reveal a human account of the construction of a skyscraper. For all the technological progress and engineering feats the im-ages show the extent to which megastructures are assembled by and dependent on the skill and teamwork of construction workers. While the health and safety conditions have im-proved since the first skyscrap-ers were built, in New York if not elsewhere, the sense of human endeavour and risk is very much present.

1 ‘Building the Times’, The New York Times Building by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, New York, 2005–6

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Iwan B aan Manufacturing Iconography

1CCTV headquarters by OMA, Beijing, China, 2008

2 National Olympic Stadium by Herzog & de Meuron, Beijing, China, 2007

2 CCTV headquarters by OMA, Beijing, China, 2008

With a background in documentary photography, Iwan Baan moved into architectural work in 2005 when he was commissioned to photograph two of the most significant projects be-ing built at the time, both in Beijing: OMA’s China Central Television (CCTV) building and Herzog & de Meuron’s National Olympic Stadium. Baan’s images reveal the life and interactions that take place within and around architecture, providing a narrative to buildings. Macro, aerial perspectives also reveal the wider urban, or rural, con-text; whether it is the tallest building in the world or a rest stop on La Ruta Peregrino, a pilgrimage route through Mexico traversed by two mil-lion people every year.

“My work is documentation around the architecture, what people do in the space, where the space is, what the surroundings are. I try to document these types of things. I’m not interested in super clean shots of the building.”

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Yves Marchand &Romain Meffre C ityscapes of Change

6 Gunkanjima, Japan, 2008

7 Looking South from building 51, Gunkanjima, 2008

8 Courtyard, buildings 18 and 19, Gunkanjima, 2012

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1 Satelite City Towers, 2002

2Marina City, 2001

Hiro shi S ugimoto Modernism Revis ited

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Fil ip D ujardin Fictional Worlds

2Untitled from the series ‘Fictions’, 2007–11