The Use and Abuse of Photography in Architecture

Ali Malik


'The world is beautiful' - therein is unmasked the posture of a photography that can endow any soup can with cosmic significance but cannot grasp a single one of the human connections in which it exists.

We need [photography] but not the way a spoiled loafer in the garden of knowledge needs it.



Photography and architecture use each other. Photography encounters architecture specifically as a means of representation and dissemination. The architectural manipulates the photographic for its own ambitions. However, the question is not so much of who does who, but rather how each creates and delineates the other?

Three examples that seem symptomatic of the encounters between architecture and photography can be identified as the following: firstly, Andreas Gursky's photograph Paris, Montparnasse 1993 discloses the photographic manipulation of the architectural. Secondly, Le Corbusier's image of Villa Scwhob reflects an instance of the architectural using the photographic to determine itself. Finally, Albert Renger-Patzsch's precise and ultra-objective photographic manipulations of architecture represent the construction of social ideology and its production as an object of consumption.

Photography's construction of architecture presumes a mastery over the "realness" of a scene. The presumed "analogic perfection" of the photographic (as a medium) overtakes the architectural (as a medium). If, according to Walter Benjamin, architecture is received in a "distracted state" by its audience, then the emulsion on the surface of a paper concretizes this condition or, more specifically, the ocular-centricity of modern culture. The will to "fix" the surface elements on a page, to stabilize silver halide and thereby get a grasp on reality predominates the photographic manipulation of the architectural. But does architecture stand on stable ground? Should we consider a photograph a revelation of architecture's 'naked state?' The mediated nature of a photograph does not allow for such clear cut associations. The illusion of a causal nexus, its paradoxes, and determinants as a presence become inscribed within the production of the architectural picture.

Photographs redefine architecture. Andreas Gursky's picture Paris, Montparnasse 1993 highlights the difference between a building and a photograph. A frontal view of a housing unit captures a two dimensional surface with intricate contingencies of planarity and depth. We confront one frame of the building showing a linear latticework of occupied difference. The apparent containment of rooms within a grid is superseded by interior dramas and anecdotal episodes of activity. However, is this really the case? Does our perception of the building truly depend solely on the frame presented to us? The angle of approach, the point of focus, and the varying kinds of distraction within the photograph create different associations and impressions. An occupied territory, a particular scene, a constructed moment, and a specific instance is limited and formalized by the photograph. Gursky's visual appropriation of artifice reconstructs its existence as architecture. The photograph reconsiders the object according to certain conditions apparent at that moment. However, there are no certainties provided by the "reality" of Gursky's photograph. Its apparent visual determinacy is an assumption; a thought extended and solidified saying: "this is architecture!" Is it?

And photography, already misleading when it reproduces surfaces (paintings), is how much more so when it pretends to reproduce volumes.

Architecture consumes photographic production. Take, for example, Le Corbusier's manipulation of photographs for the purposes of reproduction and publicity. As the only work ever recognized of Le Corbusier from his La Chaux-de-Fonds period, the Villa Schwob of 1916 as published in L'Espirit noveau 6 reveals itself to be faked. By air brushing the original photograph Le Corbusier seeks to establish a "Purist" aesthetic. More specifically, he clears all organic growth, erases all distracting objects and eliminates the pergola as a remnant of a previous vernacular architectural language. In addition, Le Corbusier modifies the entrance vestibule door, windows and steps to further accentuate a straight formal planarity. The space of the architectural construction is taken over by the constructed image on the page. The site and object are idealized to underpin an aesthetic of Purism. An object's constancy is defined by modifying its disclosure as a representation of a specific ambition. Le Corbusier's intervention within the realm of the photograph directs itself towards establishing architecture as a product of an overarching intention, namely, publicity in contrast to that of Gursky's will to capture "facticity." The example reflects an intermingling of two mediums whereby architecture merely manipulates the other as a means. Architecture uses photography to determine itself. The secret of a good photograph resides in its realism. Does a photograph articulate the position of architecture within the fluctuations, twists, and contortions of societal existence? Albert Renger-Patzsch's photographs parallel the development of the Neue Sachlikeit (New Objectivity) movement in Germany during the 1920's. Renger-Patzsch's visual strategy employed a romantic faith in technical rationality, productivity, and efficiency of means. His photographs capture an aesthetic of machine production seeking to blur the distinction between nature and technology. The Nationalist Socialist party of the time also spearheaded a similar ideology of production and industrialization on a monumental scale with projects such as the Autobahn, as a transportation machine and industrial architecture complexes signifying the mechanical technologization of the environment. Although Renger-Patzsch never aligned himself with the Nationalist Socialist party, his photographs such as that of industrial architecture and construction projects were used to establish a representation of social and cultural ideology. Renger-Patzch's photographs of architecture could be consumed by a populace as an indication of socio-political power and solidity. The photographs depict an immaculate object world formally reduced into a productivist enunciation of the machine aesthetic. Here we see the photographic manipulating the architectural yet the intermingling of both is projected as a tertiary condition implementing an image of societal and cultural construction.


Media, desire, publicity, memory, fetishism, surreality, and circumstantial evidence amongst a myriad of variables define photography's relation to architecture. Not only does photography publicly announce architecture, it also constructs an image of consumption understood as a single visual spectacle. Within the realm of the architectural, photography redefines it as an object of public consumption. However, architecture at the same time modifies photography for its own internal ends. Together they initiate the possibility of a social projection ready to be consumed in a distracted state.








 

Bibliography

Walter Benjamin, "A Small History of Photography," in One Way Street and Other Writings. London, NLB, 1979.

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Illuminations. New York HBJ 1955.

Julien Caron (Ozenfant). "Une villa de Le Corbusier, 1916" , L'Espirit Noveau 6.

Le Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture. Dover Books, New York, 1986.

Beatriz Colomina. Privacy and Publicity. Cambridge, MIT 1996.

Edward Dimendberg. "The Will to Motorization:Cinema, Highways, and Modernity." October 73. MIT Press, Summer 1995 p.90-137.

Andreas Gursky. Images. Tate Gallery, Liverpool, 1995.

Martin Jay. Downcast Eyes. Berkeley, University of California, Press, 1994.

Donald Kuspit, "A Critical Biographical Profile" Albert Renger-Patzsch: Joy before the Object. New York, Aperture / J.Paul Getty Museum, 1993.

Friedrich Nietzche. The Use and Abuse of History. London, Macmillan, 1957.

Susan Sontag. On Photography. New York, Anchor Books, 1990.



Ali Malik holds a B.A. in Architecture from U.C. Berkeley . Before his untimely death, Ali Malik was a first year Master of Architecture Candidate at Columbia University.