ABSTRACT
In the November issue of 1932, the Architectural Review published two photographs of seemingly contemporary buildings next to each other on a page that otherwise included only short captions at the bottom ( Fig. 5.1 ). What the two images have in common is a strong vertical thrust, but while the subject of the image on the left, a worm’s-eye view of the recently completed no. 500 Fifth Avenue in New York by Shreve Lamb and Harmon is immediately recognisable, the structure on the right is not, framed as it is in a nearly abstract composition. The effect of disorientation is calculated, as the author of the caption underlines by writing, “A new form of skyscraper in the grand manner? No! This seemingly splendid verticality of glass and steel is none other than an unfamiliar bird’s eye view of the roof of our old friend Victoria Station, London.” 1 The following January, the journal published a letter by the architect Basil Ionides, who not only criticised the editor for the excessive space given to photography – “I would suggest that your paper should be re-christened ‘The Photographic Review’” – but also expressed his concern at the effect some of these images might have: “At the moment the danger is that young architects might try to design buildings that look to the human eye as the photographs shown on page 219 of your November issue.” 2 Ionides’ comment is a very early example of the realization, within the architectural community, that photography was not only a powerful tool in the communication and promotion of architecture, but could actually have an impact on architectural design itself. Since then, this recognition has become a widely accepted theory, and particular emphasis has been put on the influence that the New Photography of the 1920s and 1930s might have had in the development of the International Style and on modern architecture in general. That page in Architectural Review of 1932 encapsulates many of the motifs of the New Photography: extreme angles, abstraction, the theme of comparison and contrast, the use of an image ‘out of context’ – not to mention the explicit reference to the idea of the ‘unfamiliar’ view, which was central to the ‘new vision’ promoted by László Moholy-Nagy.
