Image, Text, Architecture. The Utopics of the Architectural Media

2017

Many critics have highlighted the gulf between the experience of architecture and its representations via photography, suggesting a more humanistic and temporal portrayal. My research questions whether, in pursuing alternatives to conventional, commercial architectural photography, a more dynamic view can be revealed, one that is closer to the experience of encountering the built environment: episodic, temporal and in flux. I believe temporality and motion are indicative of the life of a building: both habitually omitted from traditional commercial representations. Practical and conceptual challenges directed me to techniques depicting 'still' and 'moving', that intersect with several of photography's discourses: the evidential value of images constructed over time, the perception of movement in still photography and negotiations between description and creativity. My methodology is an empirical investigation drawing on principles of the scientific analysis of motion (chronophotography): interpretive, yet with evidential rigour. This allies to Henri Bergson's concept of duration, Futurism, Cubism and cinematic animation, whence I take the portrayal of motion and multi-point perspectives in still images. By identifying examples from painting and illustration, I reveal a temporal approach, building up images over time, utilising observation, interpretation, editing, iteration and presentation. My subject matter is limited to what is found and what appears during each session; from this bricolage of serendipitous events selections are made throughout the practice's reiterative process. I argue the case for appropriating the artist's licence to interpret, producing an abbreviation of a longer period while remaining informative. I challenge Kracauer's contention that the true ability to depict the city is exclusive to cinema, by using a static medium to represent ever-changing landscapes populated by transient characters in ephemeral scenes. My practice bridges the gap between architectural photography and the 'photography of architecture'. I identify two anomalies that inform the practice: firstly the difference between mainstream architectural photography during the inter-war period and concurrent, vibrant, animated representations of the city in film and painting. Secondly, my case studies illustrate differences between architectural photography and visual representations in other media (CAD-generated images, architectural models and sketches); the animated nature of the latter negating the notion of commercially-driven work being necessarily objectified, pristine and sterile. Many people have helped me to produce this thesis, for which this acknowledgement seems an inadequate reward. Above all I want to thank my wife, Lynn, without whose support none of this would have happened…and whose patience I have severely tested. Many thanks go to my supervisors for support and advice: Director of studies Eamonn Canniffe, Jacqueline Butler, Jim Aulich, and past supervisors Ray Lucas and David Brittain. Philip Sykas and Rosemary Shirley gave invaluable advice and encouragement at my annual reviews, as did Eamonn (before being DOS) and Steven Gartside at the transfer stage from MPhil to PhD. I am indebted to Patrick Wright, who helped to turn my dyslexia-induced phobia of writing into far less of a problem than previously (it is still a work in progress). Rose Nelson (MMU Learner Development Service) has provided sterling support for my disability issues: above and beyond anything I could have expected of her role. Poet Jen Hadfield and journalist/novelist William Shaw gave outstanding encouragement to a non-writer at a week-long residential writing workshop in 2013. I drew much encouragement and many inspirational ideas from papers and conversations at conferences: with particular thanks to Valeria Carullo (as host) and Andrew Higgott at the only dedicated conference on this topic in the U.K. during my five years of research (Building with Light: The Legacy of Robert Elwall, RIBA, London, 2014). Fellow delegates at three of The International Conferences on the Image (Berlin 2014, Liverpool 2016 and Venice 2017) provided encouragement, feedback and advice on my paper and exhibition. Mark Durden provided useful comments after my presentation at the Open College of the Arts' conference (Photography Matters) in 2016, as did fellow presenters. Attendees at my presentation for the RPS Contemporary group's AGM, 2017 provided valuable insights. Nick Dunn, Jim Backhouse and Scott Miller were instrumental in developing my understanding of architectural models and modelmaking, particularly through their exhibitions and symposium. Paul S Holmes provided my induction session to MMU, along with insights into his and Zoe Kourtzi's research into stroke patients' recovery. Thanks also go to those who provided unpublished information: Colin Thomas (use of an image from his 'Shropshire days' series), Olivo Barbieri (image of Piazza del Plebiscito, Napoli). Eric Houlder (archaeological methods), Susan Meireis (conference paper transcript), Vid Ingelevics (record photography in museums and galleries), Ahmad Safri and Ahmad Hakim (workshop images). Many of my fellow researchers at MMU have proved to be sources of insights, sounding boards and healthy competition (as a source of motivation), becoming excellent friends. In alphabetical order they are

2016

From the perspective of a specialist in environmental health and as a son of an architectural and architectural photography innovator, the author of this essay reviews the ways that photographers approach architecture. It argues that the Internet and digital technology should be used to document how architecture accommodates what clients do and how they interact as well as documenting brief esthetic experiences in and around architecture.

Conference Proceedings: Inter = Photography & Architecture, Pamplona, 2-4 November 2016, 2016

This paper explores the use of photographs in the German mainstream architectural magazine Der Baumeister between 1927 and 1933 under the editorship of architect and author Guido Harbers. While at first glance, the magazine and its imagery appear to resemble other architectural periodicals of the time, a second look reveals a number of photographs with uncommon characteristics. A close reading furthermore suggests an unusual relationship between photographs and text in several of the magazine’s articles. On the one hand, they implicitly or explicitly bring up matters of photography, and either acknowledge the presence of photographs in articles, address their specific pictorial qualities, or appropriate them in order to highlight particular architectural characteristics. On the other, there is a noticeable lack of rigour in the authors’ use of photography, and their intentions remain unclear. The paper discusses two articles on architectural projects, which reflect the aforementioned ambiguity. In the first instance, it sheds a light on the particular use of photographs, and goes on to suggest that a diverse photographic practice existed within the architectural mainstream of the interwar period which has not yet been fully explored. Secondly, the paper argues for the existence of an underlying process of negotiation, as the journal’s authors in question explored their own relationship with the role of architectural photographs in their work. Drawing on Theodor Adorno’s thoughts on the role of the cultural critic and the dissonance of art, the paper finally suggests that the ambiguities and journalistic dubieties which the paper identifies, reflect the inherently ambiguous status of architectural photographs as reliable representations of architecture and as autonomous images.

2021

The questions that this project poses are centred on an examination of photography's relationship to modernist architectural space. Polarising the melancholic and the utopian, the definition of photography is extended to include its manifestation across a number of diverse sites and processes. What is the connection between the processes and technology of photography and its representation of modernist space? How can these relationships inform and articulate a photographic practice? This thesis comprises five key areas of investigation, with each theoretical chapter being followed by a complementary sequence of photographic images. The first section considers the process of `fragmentation' in relation to a body of photographs which I have termed `fragments'. These images reveal the aspirational or utopian content of modernist architecture as a condition of loss or melancholy. The second section develops the notion of the `fragment' in relation to `allegory', whic...

Camera Constructs: Photography, Architecture and the Modern City, 2012

International Journal of Social Sciences, 2021

Knowledge, impression and accumulation of the built environment are rarely acquired through personal experience. Most of the information is just information from photographs. The difference in perception created by the sensory difference between architectural objects produced by visual "idealization" and architectural photographs is the main starting point of this critical research. It is very important to establish a relationship with the representative image of the building in the design process. Refers to the analysis of visual materials in published architectural photographs. The aim of this research is to start with the communication and functions related to the common problems between today's architecture and photography, to understand the representational limitations of photography in architecture and to understand the potential of photography to reproduce space. Within the scope of the research, with the works of some famous photographers who contributed to modern architecture, the contribution of the performance characteristics of photography to the architectural production process and their possible developments will be emphasized. In addition, by observing the evolution of the use of photography in the field of architecture, the symbiotic relationship between photographic expression and design development will be emphasized and the field of architecture will be handled as a two-dimensional document.

The Journal of Architecture, 2019

Postwar British architects understood the power of photography for the presentation of new architecture—perhaps none better than James Stirling. An intriguing series of photographs include the architect in his own buildings, foreshadowing Leon Krier's well-known perspective renderings of the 1970s. Alison and Peter Smithson also used photography as a strategic tool for the presentation of architectural ideas, but in a different manner. Comparing Stirling and the Smithsons through the lens of architectural photography, this article reflects on the role of media after WWII. The problems created for the architectural profession by the split between architecture as media practice and architecture as sited practice were nowhere so clearly revealed as in the work of Stirling and the Smithsons. The article narrates a shift. The Smithsons used photography to design buildings that reflected immanence and demonstration. Stirling used images as evanescent traces of past engagements. The article traces an arc from the Smithsons’ commitment to legibility (from Wittkower) to Stirling’s demonstration of “memorability of image” or “imageability” in architecture (from Banham).

Photography and Culture, 2015

Review of exhibition at the Barbican Gallery, 2014