ABSTRACT
The very first photograph was an architectural photo.2 Since long exposure times were needed, architecture was an ideal first choice owing to its static nature. You ask yourself whether this served to forge a common bond between photography and architecture. Whatever it depicts, a photograph freezes its subject – and in what instances would this be more appropriate but in the case of architecture, which stands unshakably there. Indeed, the essence of architectural photography was often seen as presenting the subject as a timeless object, and of course this also meant to eliminate, if possible, and touch up, if need be, the insignia of the ephemeral that are found on and around buildings. What is remarkable is that within a relatively short period, these photographs assume the aura of the past, in other words, architectural photos relatively quickly become documents of architecture history. The most famous examples are the photographs of industrial plants by Bernd and Hilla Becher. They are not photographs of what now is but of what once was, documents of industrial archaeology. And this was arguably the intention, after all: the Bechers knew they were documenting something in the process of disappearing, namely the legacy of the coal and steel industry. What is remarkable is that many photographs of modern architecture, in
other words, of buildings that cannot be said to be technically obsolete, likewise appear to be documents of the past. Yet you could impute a totally different bond between architecture and photography in the modern age. For a period that was relatively brief, we see from our current perspective that architecture and photography come together in the aura of modernity. While the Bauhaus had arguably at the start of modernist architecture for the first time abandoned everything connected with the past, to rely on clear lines, functionality, and rational-industrial buildings, these concerns converged in photography, which was liberating itself from its dependence on other arts, above all, painting: no more pictorialism, no genre scenes, no staffage – the new goal was to show clearly and patently what photography was. Today it is difficult to separate the architectural developments of the 1920s and 1930s from their depictions in the black-and-white photography of the time. It would seem that the
photographers and architects essentially wanted the same thing. Simple shapes, clear views, rationality, functionality. Art and design historian Gerda Breuer would argue that this appearance is deceptive. She ascertains that Gropius focused on “representations of external architectural elements” and photographs aimed at asserting architecture for propagandist reasons.3 Breuer expounds on the difficulty Lucia Moholy experienced with her contract to photograph the Dessau Bauhaus in a manner that demonstrated its architectural structure. After all, as Breuer wrote:
One fundamental aspect of Modernist architecture was that the building has precedence over the image, that it develops from the inside out, from the ground plan and functions and not from the elevation; its design is not conceived substantially from its external appearance. It follows that the core has precedence over the shell, indeed, the image of the building is essentially a derivative of its constitutive architectural properties.4
