Sunday, 26 October 2014

Barbican in October - and the City

I had meant to go to the photography exhibition on at the Barbican - "Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age" - combining as it does two of my interests, photography and architecture. It was worth going to - just. Some of the photos were, well, rather grim. Black & white and of banal subjects. The aerial photos of car parks were every bit as boring as that sounds, despite the arty blurb. But of course when you have a hall full of work by different artists you are bound to like some, and better still, some you have never heard of. So my great "find" is a chap called Nadav Kander. He has a series of photos of the river Yangtze in China which were like a modernized (and oriental) Caspar David Friedrich - lovely atmospheric backgrounds with some rather startlingly modern details. The best is of a group of young men and women having a picnic by the river, with the misty river taking up much of the photo, along with the huge flyover under which they are sitting at their little picnic table. Most of the young people are just chatting over their picnic, but one young man has turned to the camera and fixes us with a fierce stare. It's just such an arresting image.

http://www.barbican.org.uk/generic/large-images.asp?id=16264&af=artgallery

I also liked, more for its interest than quality, a series of photos of crumbling modern buildings dating from the early days of independent black Africa. Hotels and government offices built in modernist style to show the optimism of the new independent nations. Now all in ruins - an eloquent picture of both the failure of the architecture and the corrupt and incompetent leaders. A dream dashed.

So then I went out and did some of my own architectural photos. Starting with the Barbican. On a grey day this can look unremittingly grim. they don't call this brutalist architecture for nothing.

Even a little pool with dolphins doesn't relieve the gloom. Actually it accentuates it.

If the sun comes out, well it's not quite so bad. It's not really the design that's so awful, its the finish. With a facelift it could be quite tolerable. Grubby grey-brown just isn't in fashion. Funnily enough not sure it ever has been. And rain adds those pretty black streaks to the rough surface.