The spaces within photographs are often missed by the casual glance of the passer-by. But they can open our eyes and minds to possibilities. It is not surprising that architects interested in context and photographers interested in the construction of places should have an affinity. The capacity of photography to reveal hidden aspects of reality mirrors many of the concerns that dominate contemporary design, and there is a particular sensibility at work in contemporary German photography that appeals to the architectural imagination.
When I met the photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg, I was surprised to find that despite the fact that we shared an uncannily similar collection of literary and musical references, we appeared to be looking at the world as if through different lenses. Photography seemed to me to accept the influence of critical theory during the 1990s in a way that was refreshingly open-minded and less prejudiced than its totemistic use in architectural circles. And although I think that her intentions are highly architectural, Rut insists that she ‘isn’t an architectural photographer’. Instead she declares, ‘I photograph space not objects’.
To me, her interest in architectural
situations seems to be accompanied by a taste for the ambiguous and
strangely comic suggestions of misunderstanding and loss that one might see
in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. Rut often photographs the city
during the night, seeking the overlooked, the abandoned, and the latent
potential for imaginative inhabitation. Whereas the urge of most architects
and critics is to appropriate the space of the other – usually aimlessly in
the mode of the ‘flâneur’ or connoisseur of the exotic or everyday – her
photographs open up a space for participation. They are inconclusive. The
artist instinctively resists the consumption of the city by both corporate
culture and the academic establishment. She wants to show us spaces that
require investigation, that make us conscious of the art of the appearance
of things. Rather than dictating how we should respond to the world, her
work exposes the space Simon Critchley describes as ‘very little, almost
nothing’, which, nonetheless, is the site of imagination in art.
Friendship used to be the goal of education and of city life, and
collaborating with like-minded people is the sort of happy-go-lucky charm
that makes London fun and instructive. In the 1990s Shoreditch had just
enough space left to enable chance encounters to become productively
playful. This Bermuda Triangle of roads escaping London and commuters racing
past into town was a strangely intimate and cosmopolitan place in which to
live and work. Although it may appear aimless behaviour, drinking is crucial
to the development of an artistic culture and enables interaction to get
quite seriously out of bounds. Collaboration begins with trust, and trusting
someone is easier after a few glasses.
Our first collaboration was an interview Rut gave to Building Design. I had never before asked anyone why they did things and she was already quite practised in trying to explain her strange compulsion to photograph cities at night. Her justification for something that seemed pointless, but that yielded compelling and unsettling evidence of the power of the mind to seek out what the conscious parts of our society ignores, was, and still is, elliptical and eclectic. It draws on poetry and cinema as much as art. Why curiosity and desire are important, and what drives part of us to look for poetry in ugliness is an unanswered question that continues to frame our ongoing conversations. In particular, themes of leaving home and returning, of imaginative reinvention and of the creative capacity of strangeness to recall commonality, are implicit in our work.
Rut began participating with me at students’ crits at various schools of architecture and we have since gone on to extend our conversation to the creation of physical spatial settings for Rut’s work. As I write we are preparing an exhibition, ffolly, for the Glyn Vivian Gallery in Swansea. It will comprise seven newly commissioned works and a retrospective of 14 photographs taken over the past six years.
The exhibition focuses on the theme of site and the perception of spaces within images, a theme that we began in Cauchemar, an exhibition of Rut’s photographs of Paris that was shown at London’s Laurent Delaye gallery, last September. The display of these works incorporated an architectural intervention that sought to extend the spaces within the images outwards into the gallery in order to encourage an intensified, almost theatrical approach to viewing the artifact: to turn the act of viewing into an event. Also, we sought to expose the slowness that is part of the making of the images, both in terms of the artist’s careful selection of sites and the long duration of her exposures. At Laurent Delaye, for example, Wound was exhibited at the end of a narrow ramped passage. As you rose upwards to view the photograph, the gash of darkness on a lichen-encrusted wall seemed to invite you to plunge head-first through the surface into a space beyond both the image and the gallery setting. The influence of the context upon your experience of viewing the artwork was mirrored by your appreciation of its effect upon its surroundings. Reflections of exhibition visitors and of the photographs in the high-gloss white paint applied to the gallery walls extended the space of the photographs phenomenally and imaginatively. You became conscious of the context of your perception.
ffolly extends this type of game by
recreating parts of Swansea in the Glyn Vivian Gallery. Inferred ramps,
nooks, passageways, rooms and squares allow the photographs of the city to
appear like windows onto the world outside.
Lynch Architects are currently designing a summerhouse for the artist in her
home village of Leiwen, on the Mosel in Germany. It will explore the
topography of the site and of her imagination and seek to amplify the
resonance of the typical and particular spatial characteristics – such as
the dynamic force of rivers and the co-existence of industry and nature –
that you find in her photographs of cities. The house will echo the spaces
within her photographs, exaggerating sensations of vertigo and of looking
from near and far at things of different scales in order to disorient the
visitor as well as to amplify their sense of place. Simply put, Rut’s work
influences the way in which we think about context.
Conventional architectural discourse teaches you to repress curiosity about the surface of things, to focus on the inner logic of an idea. Photographs can reveal the material richness of artifacts that we often dismiss as cliché, and enable kitsch and local idiosyncrasy to appear mythical and strange. Rut is acutely aware of gauging the response of the viewer to the appearance of something. Working together allows us to fabricate monstrous versions of normal situations and to elaborate patterns of thinking which make sense of an invented scenario. This makes it easier to accept that we construct not only things you look at, but how you look as well.
Lynch architects can be contacted on +44 (0)20 7739 5760 www.lyncharchitects.co.uk.
ffolly, at the Glynn Vivian Gallery, Swansea runs until December. A catalogue, ffolly, is published by Ffotogallery Press
Patrick Lynch is an architect