Whilst 'Sensing Spaces' made the point that architecture is a thing of use to be touched, smelled, experienced, the latest offering from the Barbican Centre, 'Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age' presents the subject as a purely visual art form.
'Constructing Worlds' presents work by eighteen eminent photographers who capture buildings and, in some instances, their inhabitants, from shack to skyscraper, and, seemingly, everything in between.
Most of the photographers and their work will be familiar, but this beautifully presented exhibition will give the viewer something of a new perspective on the power of photography to 'say' something of their subject.
Berenice Abbot, coached and encouraged by Man Ray in Paris during the 1920s, captured New York in its pomp - as here, depicting Park Avenue and 39th Street in 1939,
as well as its lesser imagined side as here:
at an encampment for the unemployed in the same city a year earlier.
A copy of what is perhaps Abbots most famous work 'Night View' is on display, with an explanation of when and how she conjured what surely most be one of the most iconic images of New York.
Julius Shulmans work captures the Modern American Dream. It was Shulman who photographed Pierre Koenig's Stahl House of 1959, with its floor to ceiling glass walls and 'to-die-for' views of the surrounding Hollywood Hills making it one of the most famous pieces of domestic architecture of the era. Just standing in front of his pictures propels the viewer to another time and place.
Shulmans work contrasts with that of Walker Evans. Sent on an assignment to capture the mood of Depression hit America in the 1930's, Evans was to witness and record the grinding poverty endured by share-cropping families in Hale County Alabama. His work gives dignity to people rendered poorer-than-poor by economic depression and persistent drought. Evans tenderly captures their careworn faces and undernourished bodies as well as their homes, barely furnished wooden huts.
Other highlights include Lucien Herve, so long associated with Le Corbusier, picturing the architects work at Chandigartha; Ed Ruscha's air-borne views of sports stadia; Bernd and Hilla Becher; Thomas Struth; Nadav Kander; Guy Tillim; Hiroshi Sugimoto's rather haunting blurred images he refers to as 'architecture after the end of the world'.
Over 250 images make up this splendid exhibition, beautifully designed by OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen and curated by Alona Pardo and Elias Redstone.
Until 11 January 2015. www.barbican.org.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment