"Iwan Baan. Moments in Architecture" exhibition, promoted by the Vitra Design Museum, is divided into four sections: Perspectives, China, Cities and Continuities, through which a tour is taken that shows the different areas of Baan's work from the beginning of the 2000s (when a meeting with the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas in 2004 would be decisive for his specialization in architectural photography).
Iwan Baan's complex work captures the context of a building by combining different tools that allow him to capture aerial images taken from a helicopter to show different and varied perspectives, to wide panoramic views through meticulous detail shots.
The exhibition also presents film material and striking images such as those of Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy or little-known informal constructions, passing through a circular Chinese village to a monolithic Ethiopian church, from the apartment blocks under construction in Cairo where the Coptic community is dedicated to recycling garbage, to the busy Tower of David in Caracas.
Iwan Baan. New York after Hurricane Sandy, USA, 2012. Photography by Iwan Baan.
Iwan Baan has had the opportunity to travel around the world, and his eye has been focused on both documenting thriving megalopolises and capturing the situation of areas in crisis, capturing the rise and falls of the real estate sector, as well as the density and transformation of our cities.
His ability to tell personal stories in the architectures he photographs is especially significant, including a human dimension to his visual narratives and how they interact with their environment, a vision that seeks to show the world of his images as a living and dynamic environment in the context of impressive structures and at the same time territories and landscapes that encourage us to reflect on the social and cultural impact of built spaces.
“The important thing is to tell,” explains Iwan Baan. «And this is something very intuitive and fluid. I'm not looking for timeless images of great architecture so much as the specific moment, the place and the people in it, all the unforeseen and unplanned moments that happen in and around a place, how people live there and what stories emerge. of it."
Iwan Baan. Teshima Museum of Art, Tonosho, Japan, 2010, by Ryue Nishizawa. Photography by Iwan Baan.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by the ICO Foundation, with La Fábrica and licensed by the Vitra Design Museum, which includes more than 600 photographs of the artist. In addition, these are accompanied by texts by Beatrice Galilee, Marvin Heiferman, Hans Ibelings, Mea Hoffmann and Iwan Baan himself: the most complete monograph, to date on the work of the Dutch photographer.
