Architecture and Photography in the Modern Era. The Italian Setting between the Two Wars (1920-1945), (original) (raw)

INTERNATIONALE ARCHITEKTUR, UN FOTOLIBRO PIONERO EN LA DIVULGACIÓN DE LA EMERGENTE ARQUITECTURA MODERNA. / INTERNATIONALE ARCHITEKTUR, A PIONEER PHOTOBOOK FOR THE DISSEMINATION OF THE EMERGING MODERN ARCHITECTURE

EGA - Expresión Gráfica Arquitectónica, 2022

[ENG] The aim of this research is to analyse the pioneer architectural photobook, Internationale Architektur (1925), studying the convergence between Gropius’ ideological approach and Moholy-Nagy’s editorial design in order to build a solid message about the emerging modern architecture. By comparing photobooks designed by Moholy-Nagy previously, and taking into account the significant changes made by Gropius for its second edition (1927), it may be easier to understand the importance of dissemination as a modern, specific phenomenon; therefore, today we may see the International Style as a perfect commercial tag for advertising architectural Modernism, started with the launch of the first Bauhausbücher. [ESP] Se plantea un análisis del pionero de los fotolibros de arquitectura, Internationale Architektur (1925), estudiando la convergencia entre enfoque ideológico de Gropius y el diseño editorial de Moholy-Nagy para construir un discurso sólido sobre la emergente arquitectura moderna. Mediante la comparación con fotolibros anteriormente diseñados por Moholy-Nagy, y considerando los significativos cambios introducidos por Gropius en su segunda edición (1927), se puede comprender mejor la importancia de la divulgación como fenómeno específicamente moderno; lo cual, hoy, nos permite poder interpretar al International Style como una etiqueta comercial óptima para la propaganda de la arquitectura moderna, iniciada con el lanzamiento del primer Bauhausbücher.

Photography's Development Of Architecture

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.

“Fotografía y arquitectura moderna en España, 1925-65″

Con apenas unos meses de diferencia, se publicaron en 2012 completas monografías sobre la labor realizada por dos de los fotógrafos más relevantes en la difusión de la arquitectura moderna: Ezra Stoller y Balthazar Korab. 1 Que ambos libros incidiesen en el papel iconográfico y cultural de las imágenes mostradas, manifiesta el creciente interés bibliográfico por la condición documental y mediática de la fotografía de arquitectura. Que la apreciación artística de esta última sea cada vez más acusada, lo indica la proliferación desde los años noventa de trabajos académicos e investigaciones que analizan su carácter de construcción visual, esto es, una abstracción de la realidad con identidad propia. 2 Un carácter que ha favorecido, en definitiva, la conformación historiográfica de la modernidad y que ha ayudado a la transmisión de un discurso orquestado, entre otras cosas, por la estrecha conexión entre los que diseñaban los espacios y los que los fotografiaban. 3 Quedaba así establecida la transformación de la arquitectura en un objeto de consumo, tal como ha señalado Beatriz Colomina. 4 Pero frente al binomio arte y consumo, es posible explorar una vía adicional: incidir menos sobre el objeto terminado y más sobre los procesos que lo preceden y que lo producen, es decir, saber cómo y porqué fueron hechas determinadas fotografías, a qué publico iban dirigidas y cómo llegaron a él.

"… dove l'epidemia fotografica si è diffusa". Architectural Photographs in Nineteenth-Century Sicily

Convivium - exchanges and interactions in the arts of medieval Europe, Byzantium, and the Mediterranean, 2019

… dove l'epidemia fotografica si è diffusa." Architectural Photographs in Nineteenth-Century Sicily The various practices and uses of photographs and their effects in the nineteenth century are more clearly reflected in Sicily than in other parts of Italy and the rest of Europe. Photographs and their appearance in both popular and scholarly print media gave Sicily widespread visibility. This paper considers photographs of Norman monuments in Palermo and Monreale made for diverse purposes: they provided documentation and inventory for preservation and restoration; they served as an experimental instrument for architectural analysis; they offered new methods for the then-new disciplines of art and architectural history; they were tourist souvenirs depicting romantically transfigured sceneries; and they even played an important role in formation and promotion of the Italian nation-state.

THE ROLE OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE TRANSFERS OF ARCHITECTURAL IDEAS IN THE ARCHITECTURAL MAGAZINES OF THE 1950s AND 1960s: FROM DOCUMENTS TO SOCIALLY ENGAGED CRITICISM

Studia ethnologica Croatica

The article examines the role of photography in architectural magazines during the 1950s and 1960s, with special focus on the transfers of architectural ideas. By applying an interdisciplinary method that includes a contextual model of visual studies, art, architecture and design history, the article analyzes selected examples to gain insight into the theoretical and cultural-historical foundations and circumstances of the creation and transformation of the visual language of photography in architectural magazines published in the specified period. Instead of (re)constructing the narrative, the roles of photography in the representation of architectural production are studied as a field of complex relations in the field of cultural production. Special attention is paid to specific ways of establishing visual codes of communicating architectural ideas based on photography, created during the 1950s and 1960s in different political and cultural contexts. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the interpretation of architectural photography, from documenting to socially and politically engaged criticism, as well as relativizing the boundaries between architecture and popular culture in the sphere of visual, aesthetic, spatial and ideological aspects of the representational discourse of architectural magazines. This paper is open access and may be further distributed in accordance with the provisions of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 HR licence.

An archive at the nexus of photographic culture and city culture in transformation: a unique case in the history of Italian photographic practice

The Ways of Archiving. Practices, Conditions and Discourses around the Study of Arts and Culture, 2022

The International PhD Workshop opens a space for PhD training around the problem of archives, sources and fieldwork in the discipline of History, with a special focus on the study of Contemporary Art and Visual Culture. To this end, the Workshop is divided into several theoretical and practical sessions, as well as a series of visits to archives and documentation centers in Spain and France. The aim of this formative space is to offer a critical and transversal approach to intrinsic and current issues related to the archival device and its associated practices. Ultimately, the originality of this Research Workshop lies in its dialogical vocation as it will bring together PhD students with national and international experts, generating a space for exchange that will enrich their ongoing research.

Eds. Sara Hill and Giuliana Minghelli. Stillness in Motion: Italy, Photography and the Meaning of Modernity.

Italian Culture, 2016

fascinating exploration of Italy's complex relation with Modernity and of Italy's relationship with photography. The advent of photography in the nineteenth century coincided with the process of modernization within western societies during which major historical events, such as the industrial revolution and the emergence of consumer capitalism, took place. Photography did not only record still fragments of a reality in motion, it also became a constitutive part of it. As a material object, rather than a mere visual phenomena, photography has a social life. Starting from a materialistic approach to photography, this book explores "the social life of photographs" (4): the ways in which the medium has intersected with different fields and disciplines, which span from social sciences to literature, from cinema and popular culture to politics.

Architectural Photography and the Contingency of History

Inter Photo Arch, Universiity of Navarra, Spain, 2016

Examines the current history of architecture's contingency in the present situation of high security as the attempt to contain the inevitability of history by prediction and anticipation. Contingency is seen as the appearance of a lapse in time in which a potential insecurity can be anticipated. Architecture itself is responsible for insurance against risk and that has led to changes in the use of the architectural camera. Photography becomes securitized under conditions of emergency. Instead of its model in the archival function, architectural photography is absorbed to scanning technologies and automated photographies. The paper refers to the 2005 unveiling of architect Peter Eisenman's Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, as a model in regard of the contingency of the 'late' monument as effect. This effect - of historicity - is subjected to a methodology developed by Reinhardt Koselleck that of 'conceptual' history in Eisenman's practise and also in the work of two contemporary artists, Harun Farocki and Walid Raad. The paper suggests architectural photography develops an ability to represent contingency as interruption to the circuits of exchange. In the ensuing delay, the virtual photographs used by Farocki and Raad create the possibility for the transition of photography into the ethical and political.

Imaging Architecture: the Uses of Photography in the Practice of Architectural History

Photography in architectural history is often used in a highly conventional manner, simply to depict, describe or identify the buildings under discussion. This paper, which provides a critical overview of the use of photographic imagery within the academic practices of teaching and publishing architectural history, considers alternative imaging strategies -dialectical imaging and temporality -to show how various social, political and other meanings of architecture may be created by photographs as well as by the written word. Concepts derived from Brecht, Benjamin and Hildebrand are used to expand on notions of the dialectic and temporality, and the latter in particular is developed into sub-categories of the everyday, the event, dissemination and the narrative.