https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html;
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-need-for-street-view-in-architecture.html;
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2011/06/surprizes.html;
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2014/10/drawing-belfast-command-character.html;
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2018/12/graphics-making-zombies-with-spirit-of.html;
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-allure-of-photograph.html;
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/05/fabulous-photography.html;
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-architectural-image.html;
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/04/architectural-jigsaws.html;
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/04/more-jigging-sawing.html;
https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/05/four-new-projects.html.
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The issues involve the way in which photography is singular – always framing, selecting, and composing each ‘snap’ as a deliberately contrived, ‘arty’ image. Quantity does not appear to have any impact on the outcome, as even the project presented with a collection of 36 separate images of the one place – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/05/four-new-projects.html - still suffers from the problem of anonymous ‘distance’ in this multiplicity of singularity, where the observer is kept in place by the camera lens that presents ‘arty angles’ for considered consumption and admiration, rather than providing information about experience. It is this particular photographic expression that establishes the sense of exhibition, of display, cleverly selecting portions by cunning, artful framing where one millimetre might make the difference between a desirable, or preferable image, and an undesirable one; such are the parameters of this exactness of preconceived intent. This ‘through-the-lens’ strategy is used to reveal the remote, the icy ‘grandness’ of designs by excising neighbours and unwanted street elements, and concentrating on the preferred identity, with the same cunning framing used to display pretty portions of the project, and piecemeal details that make admirable, ‘interesting’ compositions as Cubist ensembles or Neoplastic assemblies with deliberate, Hitchcock framing, all carefully arranged for the lens and by the lens. The results are such that even the architect can be amazed with the outcome, such is its clever, image-making technique that reveals things as never seen before.#
The approach with such published projects seems to be the desire to create an intellectual collage, a gathering together of arranged, specially composed pieces that present a certain feeling in their clustering, assembling an ambience for the viewer to piece together as an emotional understanding that one is supposed to interpolate as ‘experiencing’ the architecture. The proposition is that one would sense the place in this manner if one were to walk around and through it: alas it is not so.
What is forgotten is that the body is more complex in its sensing of place and space, of the knowing immediacy of being there, than any photograph can exhibit, no matter how many images might exist. The lens captures ‘photographic’ matters alone – a ‘seeing as’ through this lens, then that; from this angle; then that one; in this light; then that. One misses the feel of air movement and its temperature; the sound of the foot on the floor; the feel of the parts touched; the quiet noise of movement; the variation in light; the twist of the body; the smell of atmosphere; the transience of ever-changing, interconnected vistas – and a lot more: the before and after intertwined in the present; in front and behind; beside; inside; outside; between - there is no editing here in this continuum. Flesh and blood is far more wholesome than vision alone; and certainly more integrally complex than those views selected and defined by a particular camera and its lens, the mere sundry stills taken from the ‘movie’ of experience. Here one can recall the director of a film holding up the lens to see how what is in front of the eyes might appear on the screen – such is the difference in seeing things here and now, and as photographed. We need to realise how limiting our architectural publications truly are; how they manipulate; yet it is through publications and photographs that we come to know most of what we understand about architecture. The circumstance is serious if it is not identified, comprehended, and managed appropriately.#
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Street View is just one example of how a passing body can and does perceive, but this too, is photography, just lacking in the cunning of contrived preconception; see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-need-for-street-view-in-architecture.html. Street View eliminates the selective framing to reveal more of what the nonchalant passer-by might experience, albeit still through various lenses. One might argue for ‘House View’ to be more used in architecture as it is in real estate adverts; but even this is problematical as it depends entirely on the camera, what it is pointed at, and how it is handled, zoomed in or wide-angled. It is the extreme, wide-angled image that the real estate world loves as it presents even the most pokey room as a spacious delight.
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Just how we might realise more of experience in our publications is a problem. The difference we are speaking about can be sensed in painting; for example, in the paintings by William Robinson, Albert Tucker and Fred Williams, of Springbrook in Queensland, Australia. This World Heritage-listed region of southeast Queensland has been much photographed, so the ‘factual’ eye of the lens that records the photographs can be compared with the painter’s eye that seeks to reveal differently, and more. It is this ‘more’ in experience that one is concerned with in architecture, because the photographic eye appears to have taken over as an ideal, ignoring the ‘more’ as an irrelevance; dismissing it while concentrating on its own declarative guile as art. As long as we are encouraged to ‘appreciate’ projects through photographs, then the likelihood of this approach permeating the intentions of the architect as an ambition increases. Already we get architects explaining during architectural talks that their work “has not been photographed yet,” meaning that the slick professional photographs that re-invent the images by re-styling and editing them, have not yet been taken. This comment highlights the expected difference between the ad hoc viewing of the amateur and the selective zooming and framing of the professional that now comes complete with Photoshopping that can fabricate ever-new realities. It is this latter expression, the selective zooming, framing, and editing, that is concerning, as it is becoming an end in itself when architecture should be about life, and needs to be comprehended and sensed in this manner rather than as some impossible ideal. The experience of architecture has been touched upon by Steel Eiler Rasmussen in Experiencing Architecture, a publication that seeks to understand the complexities involved. Christopher Alexander has sought to do likewise in a finer grain, in A Pattern Language; and finer and more subtly still in The Nature of Order. This is what the arty photographs miss – the richness of enchantment in being there: Alexander has called it inner beauty. The photograph, with its certainty, leaves the viewer aside; outside.
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The photographic ideal eliminates the ordinary richness of everyday experience by seeking to control it with its slick technological manipulation defining the expression in two dimensions, rather than embellishing the sensing of the feeling body and enquiring mind. The photograph offers an enigmatic ‘new’ reality for the eyes to look at. Photographs direct us on how to see places, spaces, and forms: this is the problem with the photograph. Until we free ourselves from its controlling limitations, we will find ourselves bound by the desire to capture and reproduce the slick expression that it can reveal – those smart voids free from the dust and clutter of everyday living that establish ambitions for outcomes that only exist as, for, and in the stark confidence of the photograph. We are given the expectations of a photographic perfection rather than the richness of the ‘real’ experienced world.
It is this world that needs our attentions so that it can be accommodated and enhanced rather than isolated as an undesirable, ‘anti-photographic’ mess. Our eyes have become trained to see the world as photographs, and to expect their pristine presences. Whose kitchen is actually always like any photographed for publication? The difference is ‘extra-terrestrial.’ The proposition seems to be that if it cannot photograph well, it is not good; but ‘clever’ photography can ‘improve’ a place. This is really the heart of the photographic ideal, with some places requiring more cunning than others in order to achieve the ‘arty’ shot. Our eye silently knows what to look for in these images; we have developed an expectation of photographic perfection in style. One never sees the rear of Wright’s Robie House photographed – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-vanna-venturi-house-postmodern.html This artifice uses all devices and techniques in order to achieve the stunning, unforgettable image that creates and fixes the memorable identity of a place – the base that becomes the ground-defining core of all other expectations, enhancing these instead of touching life itself, so that one is always only going to be disappointed with the real thing: with the Robie House, this is its size, as well as the ‘back wall.’ The bold, photographic self-importance shaped by the mystery of the lens and light, is humbled by a reality that is sadly demeaned by the pretence. This is the problem with the photograph. Programmes that handle photographs have a variety of options that allow manipulation of the image; unbelievably, one can add ‘beauty’ to a portrait, bizarrely allowing one to admire one’s own ‘improved’ appearance.
The more we isolate and frame, and manipulate, the more we remove information that is an essential part of the whole: the deception is heightened. Arriving at a place is always a test of photographic knowing, as the eye brings its learned, photographic experiences to test the fit with those flesh and blood experiences – this is the power of the photograph: we are told how to see. The potency of the image is such that marvellous views in nature are perceived as photographs on a calendar, or as postcards, rather than what they are themselves: c.f. Norwegian fjords – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-church-of-egersund-necessity-of.html. The worry is that the photograph belittles flesh and blood, its reading and sensing, when the superiority needs to be reversed. The photograph is just one tool, not the whole. It has its place, but it is not and should not be the dominant identity, the authority that we have made it. We find ourselves living with photographic images rather than with the reality of experience; ours is becoming a phantom world that is constantly seeking elsewhere rather than enjoying being there: contentment is fractured into constant, unrequited desires.
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We need to design for life and living, not for ‘good’ photographs. Paintings can illustrate this difference. While we have been critical of paintings in architecture – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/03/architecture-painting.html – this is where the painting is used as the model for the building. It is rather like building a photograph which is the concern of the dominance of the framed, photographic expression – that it actually happens. The experience referred to is that which seeks to expose more of the sense of wholeness of being, that wonder of experience. It can be seen in painting that seeks to touch more than a lens can capture. Why else paint? The Archibald Prize is full of portraits struggling to replicate the HD visions captured by fine lenses. These images may best be left for the camera, with the ‘more’ of life being sought in expression for painting, sculpture, and, yes, in architecture too.
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We find ourselves battling to achieve photographic expression in buildings in the same way the portrait painters have laboured to capture every hair; every wrinkle. Life is more; we need to search for and respond to this more – this inner beauty - rather than indulge ourselves in photographic seeing and matching. It is experience that we need to attend to; not style and its dramatic expression. We need place and space to be engaging, quietly life-enhancing, not merely distracting displays that stimulate with their impressive glare and blare.
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Here one thinks of the Serge Jacques Paris-Hollywood Taschen Icons 1998 publication. Jacques comments that while the lovely ladies might look happy and invitingly gorgeous, most of the work was carried out in a stuffy, cramped studio under the sweaty heat of lighting with dusty props dragged in from the store, during tedious, extended working sessions: the situation lacked the sexy glamour the photographs suggest. Jacques makes it clear that there is a stark difference between the desirable appearance presented and the actual circumstances. Pornography thrives on this difference, just as architecture does too: we are stimulated to bring our beliefs and hopes into play, all of our positive possibilities.
The proof pages published by Jacques are interesting, as they reveal all of the images taken at the one shoot, with those that are considered the ‘preferred’ ones circled for enlargement and publication; the rest, the many, are rejected. It is the photographer’s process; take a lot of images, print them all as contact prints, now as thumbnails, review the outcome and then print off the final selected set of images – the ones that offer the best, most alluring appearances. The ‘best’ photograph is often a matter of pure chance, the selection from a set of snaps taken with the ever-hopeful strategy: one good one must turn up if I take enough.
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Architectural photography uses the same blind process of likelihood and desire.
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