5 – 2017

Powerful Images

Today there is hardly any architecture monograph that does not include an extensive reference to the photographer; no museum with a photograph collection that does not examine its potential for a special exhibition: everyone is talking about architecture photography. Therefore, why produce an issue about it? Two reasons: firstly, through the new media the circulation of images has grown exorbitantly. Here we are talking about a language that, for the first time, functions purely through pictures, about “image socialism” as Wolfgang Ullrich puts it (NZZ 31. 10. 2016). Pictures respond to pictures and all of us are involved in this flow. Secondly, thanks to digital processing the production of images before the building is erected, the art of rendering, has been professionalized to such an extent that it hardly lags at all behind depictions of reality. Rendering, photography and the built fabric influence each other. Who, when they find themselves surrounded by new buildings, has not felt as if they were in a rendering? The sheer mass of pictures and also the unsuspected possibilities of post-production make it necessary to find a new way of dealing with architecture photography. Information and objective representation can no longer be the only goals. And finally: as editors we are ourselves involved in the production of images. In the function of editor — or art director — of the magazine we influence sovereignty in interpreting architecture via the display of its images. Unfortunately, we are, not infrequently, presented with an unsatisfactory selection: housing without people, museums without exhibits, or cities without life. But — and of this we are completely convinced — in order to be able to assess architecture its suitability for everyday use must be tested. However, use and everyday life are generally banished from the images along with, for the most part, the photographer’s subjective authorship. Therefore we wish for more courage on the part of the architects who give the commissions. By strengthening the photographer as author and consequently arriving at a more subjective view, we hope to be able to trace the invisible qualities of architecture. In communicating architecture only good authors can escape the representation trap by means of an independent narrative in the image.