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Constructing Worlds sprawls over two floors at the Barbican and unites 18 photographers from across the global signposting a journey that charts the relationship between architecture and photography. There couldn’t be a more fitting gallery space to host this exhibition than in the Barbican.
Elias Redstone and Alona Pardo worked closely with architects Office KGDVS, carefully guiding visitors chronologically to each artist – starting upstairs in the top left-hand-corner with Berenice Abbott’s dynamic shots of New York from the 1930s, then work clockwise around. After Thomas Struth’s hauntingly desolate Unconscious Places, wander down the stairs to the contemporary photographers and head anti-clockwise for sequential viewing, ending with Nadav Kander’s colour series on urbanism in China along the Yangtze River). Bold geometric shapes in the break up this brutalist space, where every so often purposeful gaps and windows reveal glimpses of what’s in-store ahead.
There are countless highlights from all the likely candidates here. A newly edited version of Bern and Hilla Becher’s Water Towers (edited personally and especially for the show by Hilla) makes a bold appearance; rare original prints from Julius Shulman’s dwindling archive; and un-seen (even to himself) work from Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places project add to the treasure trove upstairs in the show. But when visually recalling this show Hiroshi Sujimoto’s soft exposure of the Twin Towers and Nadav Kander’s beautifully composed bridge shot of Yangtze, The Long River both sit in the contemporary portion downstairs will remain more vivid. With such a vast array of heavyweight photographers spanning almost a century, this exhibition is easily taken for granted, leaving an obvious question lingering. Why hasn’t this been done before?
It had been a year in the planning and Redstone and Pardo looked slightly exhausted when Glass first met the two curators. It was a few nights before the exhibition opened and the pair were still hanging prints, checking finishing touches and beaming with a mixture of energy and pride of what they had achieved while showing us around …
When you first confronted this brief was there one photographer you instantly wanted to include?
ER: When I said yes to the exhibition, there was a list of artists I felt would be important but the exhibition was curated by Alana and myself so it was a very collaborative process. We brought different people to the show, so between us we developed the narrative and story, and the history we wanted to communicate.
How hard was it to edit and narrow down the selection of photographers?
ER: It was difficult but it became quickly apparent who we wanted to show. There are many people who are working in this field, but we feel that the 18 we selected present a clear overview of this history we want to chart.
What history do you want to chart here? [Looking at Julius Shulman’s Case Study series]
ER: As well as celebrating his work we are looking at the Case Study Houses as a post-war moment of optimism; what we learnt from the war, construction techniques and how people could live.
AP: There’s reconciliation between a more urban society that was emerging and new modern ways of building homes. It marks a particular moment.
ER: Yes, there are a few photographers in the show that weren’t photographing for their work to be presented in a gallery setting, [Julius] Shulman for example was shooting mainly on commission for magazines and for work to be shown in magazines, so [alongside the original prints] we’re showing the original art and architecture magazines that commissioned the images.
And that context is important to how we view the images now?
ER: Yes, for example you can see how he used black and white photography for architectural press and the colour glamour shots to sell this lifestyle.
How important was it for you to show a mixture of photographers who used architecture in photography, rather than more vocational practise of architectural photography.
ER: The exhibition was never going to be about architecture photography as a genre, what we wanted to do was show the more meaningful critical relationship you can have between the two disciplines, how and what photographers can say about the world by focusing on the built environment.
AP: In the title we’ve very much said its photography and architecture; they are two disciplines that converge at a moment, they interact and in many ways there is a co-dependent relationship.
Did you have complete autonomy in your selection?
AP: Absolutely. Our guardian principle was about how to tell a compelling visual story of the 20th century through the built form as apposed to just the architecture …
And a lack of human presence …
AP: There are very few human figures but we wanted the human presence to be felt with traces of humanity.
How did the photographers receive the plan for this exhibition?
ER: One thing that was really nice and amazing was the enthusiasm people had for this. One of the first people we approach was Stephen Shore and he said, “This show has to happen. No one has looked at it in this way before!” While Hilla Becher were equally was an insistent.
Did you request the Water Tower [Bernd and Hilla Becher] series?
Yes, we requested Water Towers because we thought it would be very relevant to show and Hilla came back with this brand new edit, designed especially for this room.
In Shore’s section in particular you have exhibited new and unseen work.
ER: This has been a real treat, this body of work is from Uncommon Places, and what he discovered was a lot of photos that he had taken during the time he had never processed before, so some have never been exhibited, never been reproduced.
How do you feel presenting a completely new body of work?
ER: It felt like a lot of pressure on us.
AR: Yes, but he [Shore] was very keen for us to include these new works, not just show the greatest hits.
ER: It would have been very easy to show the famous works, but what has been really nice is making the edit that shows work that hasn’t been shown that hasn’t had the time and the airing for people to really appreciate it. Now I look around and it’s really hard to tell which are which.
Did you visit most of the photographers during the curatorial process?
AR: A number yes, as many as we could. With Ed Ruscha we didn’t need to visit as we were quite clear on what we wanted to show and where; but people like Stephen Shore where there’s such a richness to select from it felt important to enter a dialogue with him almost and understand where and what felt important.
ER: And with Julius Shulman there’s very few original prints left so I went to a gallerist in Los Angeles to see what was there and make a selection on-site. It’s about getting the prints of the best quality that are an edit of what would work in this show.
How does photography reveal wider truths about society?
ER: Photography is important as a critical tool. It marks moments in time. We’re inundated with photos everyday and we actually forget that there are these very powerful relationships photography can have with architecture, so it’s focusing back on that and reminding people of this important relationship that is still at play.
by Stephanie Clair
Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age is on until January 11, 2015 in the Art Gallery,
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS