Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age

Since the very first photograph, architecture has proved to be an enduring subject matter for photographers. Constructing Worlds looks beyond the medium’s ability to simply document the built world and explores the power of photography to reveal wider truths about society. The exhibition brings together 250 works – some rarely seen and many shown in the UK for the first time – by 18 leading photographers from the 1930s to now, who have changed the way we view architecture and think about the world in which we live.

Beginning with Berenice Abbott’s ground-breaking photographs charting the birth of the skyscraper in New York, the show takes the visitor on a global journey of twentieth and twenty-first century architecture, including: Lucien Hervé’s subtle evocations of modernity as found in Chandigarh by Le Corbusier; the luxury lifestyle of Julius Shulman’s images of California’s residences; the moving nature of Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum as seen by London based photographer Hélène Binet; the recent dramatic growth of Chinese urbanisation recorded by Nadav Kander and the devastating effects of war in Afghanistan as expressed in the poignant images of Simon Norfolk.

Artists include: Berenice Abbott, Iwan Baan, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Hélène Binet, Walker Evans, Luigi Ghirri, Andreas Gursky, Lucien Hervé, Nadav Kander, Luisa Lambri, Simon Norfolk, Bas Princen, Ed Ruscha, Stephen Shore, Julius Shulman, Thomas Struth, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Guy Tillim. The exhibition is designed by the internationally recognised Brussels architecture firm, Office KGDVS, led by Kersten Geers and David Van Severen.

Jane Alison, Head of Visual Arts, Barbican, said.-
 

“Photography and architecture have a long and shared history and yet amazingly this is the first major exhibition in London to throw light on this relationship. Featuring key photographers and major architects it brings together two key strands of Barbican Art Gallery’s programme and is a must see for anyone interested in how we experience architecture and the world in which we live. Since its inauguration in the early 1980s the Art Gallery has championed photography through seminal exhibitions including American Images: Photography 1945-1980 (1984); William Eggleston: Ancient and Modern (1992) and more recently In the Face of History: European Photographers in the Twentieth Century (2006) and Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s (2012).”

Organised both chronologically and thematically, the exhibition opens with Berenice Abbott’s ground-breaking photographic project Changing New York (1935-1939) that captured the transformation of New York into a modernist metropolis, focusing her lens on the dramatic changes the city was undergoing with towering skyscrapers replacing older low-rise buildings. At the same time, Walker Evans was on assignment for the Farm Security Administration photographing the vernacular architecture of the Deep South which bore witness to the adverse consequences of modernity. In contrast, Julius Shulman’s photographs of the Case Study Houses programme (1946-1966) capture the experimental architecture and ideal modern lifestyle encapsulated in California in the 1950s. Le Corbusier quickly gauged the power of photography to communicate the essence of his architectural vision which was perfectly expressed in Lucien Hervé’s cinematic documentation of Chandigarh, India – a modernist symbol of a newly independent India.

Reflecting on the legacy of Walker Evans’s objective documentary style and interest in vernacular architecture, which influenced a generation of photographers across the USA and Europe during the 1960s and 70s, the exhibition goes on to consider the works of Ed Ruscha, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Stephen Shore and Thomas Struth. Combining the cityscape of Los Angeles with the vernacular, Ruscha’s photobooks Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965) and Thirtyfour Parking Lots (1967) communicate a particular urban experience whilst the decaying industrial European landscape is the focus of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s comprehensive archive of arcane industrial archetypes. Stephen Shore’s explosive colour photographs from Uncommon Places (1972) and Amarillo – Tall in Texas (1972); and the unsentimental street scenes of Unconscious Places by Thomas Struth all reference Evans’s nascent documentary approach, whilst reflecting on the repetition and banality which modernity can incite.

Reflections on Architecture consider photographers’ interpretations of and their response to architects' and iconic buildings of the modern age. Providing layers of narrative and injecting ancillary meaning to the physical space, these photographs offer a way of understanding the architect’s intentions in relation to the lived reality, as exemplified in Luigi Ghirri’s lyrical response to Aldo Rossi’s architecture; Hélène Binet’s studies of fragments of Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum, Berlin; deliberately blurred photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto of iconic twentieth-century architecture; Luisa Lambri’s exploration into the reality of inhabiting and living a modernist lifestyle in domestic Modern architecture; and the response to the impersonality of today’s global cities in Andreas Gursky’s monumental photographs.

Constructing Worlds culminates with Cities in Change, where the contemporary experience of the urban built environment is conveyed through Guy Tillim’s exposé of late-modernist-era colonial structures in Angola, Congo, Madagascar and Mozambique in the series Avenue Patrice Lumumba (2008); Simon Norfolk’s Chronotopia (2001) and Burke + Norfolk (2010) series, which show how the scars of the past are revealed in the architectural present; Bas Princen’s documentation of the urban transformation in the Middle East in Refuge, Five Cities (2009); Nadav Kander’s portrayal of the impact of colossal modern construction; and though the Torre David series by Iwan Baan, which captures an example of contemporary usurpation, adaptation and repurposing of architecture.

Building on the legacy of the Barbican’s iconic architecture and pioneering approach to curating photography, the Constructing Worlds season presents a constellation of projects that celebrate the interplay of photography, architecture and life – as well as creating new portraits of the Barbican for our time. With the exhibition exploring photography’s special relationship to architecture as its catalyst, the season also comprises: a new commission in the Curve by the internationally acclaimed artist Walead Beshty; a dedicated film strand City Visions, focusing on the energy and complexity of global city living and follows our 2013 acclaimed Urban Wandering season; a brand new film commission and residency by Ile Bêka and Louise Lemoine, best known for their now legendary take on Rem Koolhaas’s Maison à Bordeaux, and the first of a changing series of displays devoted to the history and life of the Barbican.

Venue.-Barbican Art Gallery, Barbican Centre. [visitor information] London, UK.
Dates.- 25 September 2014 – 11 January 2015.