Photographic modern architecture: Inside 'the New Deep'

Journal of Architecture

Volumn 9, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 331-354

  Zimmerman, Claire ^a  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

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EID: 65849095903     PISSN: 13602365     EISSN: 14664410     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13602360412331296143     Document Type: Review

References (63)

1. George Nelson, 'Architects of Europe Today, 7: Miës van der Rohe,' Pencil Points XVI, no. 9 (September, 1935), p. 456 (my emphasis)
2. 'Ich bin gegen das Photographieren von Interieurs... Die Photographie entstofflicht nämlich, aber ich will gerade, daß die Menschen in meinen Zimmern den Stoff um sich fühlen, daß er auf sie wirke, daß sie von dem geschlossenen Raum wissen, daß sie den Stoff, das Holz fühlen, daß sie es mit ihrem Gesicht und Tastsinn, überhaupt sinnlich wahrnehmen, daß sie sich bequem setzen dürfen und den Stuhl auf einer großen Fläche ihres peripheren Körpertastsinns fühlen und sagen: Hier sitzt es sich vollkommen.' (Loos's emphasis.)
3. Adolf Loos, 'Von der Sparsamkeit,' Wohnungskultur 1 (1924-25), 2-3: pp. 17-22
4. Translated as 'Regarding Economy,' in Max Risselada, ed., Raumplan versus Plan Libre (New York, 1988), pp. 137-141 (translation modified). This article was compiled from conversations Loos had with Bohuslav Markalous, editor of the Brno journal Wohnungskultur
5. To the observation, 'who would ever think they were?' I would merely point to the continuing dependence of architecture on photography for its widespread disse mination, and the internalised habit of the discipline, to use photographs when speaking about buildings. Part of what makes photographs effective tools for architecture is the clear assumption that we know the difference between images and objects - without subjecting the exchanges between the two to regular scrutiny
6. In the same article cited above (n. 2), Markalous quoted Loos further: 'I am against the photographing of interiors. Something quite different comes out of it. There are designers who make interiors not so that people can live well in them, but so that they look good in photographs. These are the so-called graphic interiors, whose mechanical assemblies of lines of shadow and light best suit another mechanical contrivance: the camera obscura. My home interiors are impossible to judge from photographs or reproductions. I am certain that, if photographed, they would look wretched and ineffective.' In the original: 'Ich bin gegen das Photographieren von Interieurs. Es kommt dabei etwas ganz anderes heraus. Es gibt Architekten, die Einrichtungen machen, nicht damit der Mensch in ihnen gut wohne, sondern damit es beim Photographieren schön ausfalle. Das sind die sogenannten gezeichneten Architekturen, die durch ihre mechanische Zusammenstellung von Schatten- und Lichtlinien am besten wieder einem mechanischem Apparat entsprechen, hier also der Dunkelkammer. Nach Photographien oder Reproduktionen lassen sich meine Wohnungseinrichtungen überhaupt nicht beurteilen. Ich bin gewiß, daß es auf die Photographie elend, effek tlos ausfällt.'
7. For one influential example, see Rosalind Krauss, 'Photography's Discursive Spaces,' in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1985), pp. 131-150
8. See Roh's discussion of the multiple roles of photography in Franz Roh, Aenne Biermann 60 Fotos (Berlin, Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1930), pp. 3-11
9. Roh was a student of Heinrich Wölfflin's, and subsequently a Professor at Munich. He published Foto Auge with Jan Tschichold in 1929
10. An article in Die Form of 1929 called for a 'clear and objective representation of the object' ('eine klare und sachliche Darstellung des Objekts'), noting that pictures in series 'offer an approximation of filmic representation' ('eine Annäherung an filmische Darstellung bieten'). Describing a series of pictures of an Otto Haesler house addition, the editor noted, 'the photographer has gone around the house with his camera, and one senses the house in its corporeality, through an overview of five exposures'. The original reads, '...ist der Fotograf mit seiner Kamera uum das Haus herumgegangen und man empfindet das Haus beim Überblicken der fünf Aufnahmen in seiner Körperlichkeit.' Wilhelm Lotz, 'Architekturfotos,' Die Form, 4 (1929), pp. 69-70
11. See Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1994)
12. idem, 'Mies Not' in Detlef Mertins, ed., The Presence of Mies (New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1994)
13. Andreas Haus, 'Fotogenic Architecture', Daidalos 66 (December, 1997), pp. 84-91
14. idem, 'Fotografische Polemik und Propaganda um das " Neue Bauen" der 20er Jahre', Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaften 20 (1981), pp. 90-106
15. Rolf Sachsse, Bild und Bau. Zur Nutzung technischer Medien beim Entwerfen von Architektur (Braunschweig and Wiesbaden, Bauwelt Fundamente, 1997)
16. Also see Robin Evans, 'Mies van der Rohe's paradoxical symmetries', AA Files 19 (Spring 1990): pp. 56-68
17. (reprinted in idem, Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1997), pp. 233-77)
18. This is not to suggest that we can conceive of modern architecture as inherently 'radical' or 'progressive,' but only that architectural photography displays its reliance on earlier pictorial or compositional norms in depicting architecture that has abandoned similar norms from its own discipline. This constitutes a form of 'non-simultaneous simultaneity' similar to that described by Wilhelm Pinder and taken up by Ernst Bloch. See in this regard, Frederic J. Schwartz, 'Ernst Bloch and Wilhelm Pinder: Out of Sync', in Grey Room 3 (2001), pp. 55-89. Schwartz sums up an art historical problem that applies uncannily well to the current case: 'It was in the history of art that time, as it bent and clove, became visibly spatial, but with absences and voids, faster and slower zones.' p. 70
19. Most of the drawings from Mies's office remained in East Germany until the 1960s
20. This statistic was quoted to me by Jan Sapák, restoration architect in Brno, and long involved in research on the Tugendhat House
21. Unbuilt projects in Mies's office at this time included the Nolde House, the Krefeld Golf Club project, four glass office building proposals, and the Neue Wache competition. The four glass office building projects were: the Adam Building, the Stuttgart Bank and Administration Building, the Alexanderplatz competition, and the second Friedrichstrasse skyscraper competition. For general information on Mies's German period, see Terence Riley and Barry Bergdoll, Mies in Berlin (New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 2001)
22. and Wolf Tegethoff, Mies van der Rohe: The Villas and Country Houses (New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1985)
23. For the Tugendhat House, see Adolf Stiller (ed.), Das Haus Tugendhat, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Brünn, 1930 (Salzburg, Pustet, 1999)
24. Wolf Tegendhat, Im Brennpunkt der Moderne: Mies van der Rohe und das Haus Tugendhat in Brünn (Munich, HypoVereinsbank, 1998)
25. Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat, and Wolf Tegethoff, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, The Tugendhat House (New York, Springer, 2000)
26. Loos's critique should be situated within a larger cultural enterprise that attempted to return representation to a strictly coded set of rules, tied firmly back to the originating source. His closest compatriot in this effort was Karl Kraus. Linguistically based, the effort was connected to Wittgenstein's analysis of language, and Gottlob Frege's earlier efforts to codify language as logical science. For Kraus and Loos, this quasi-scientific research into the parameters of logical expression ought also to govern creative writing, commentary, architecture
27. Willi Warstat, Allgemeine Ästhetik der photographischen Kunst auf psychologischer Grundlage (Halle a.S., Verlag Wilhlem Knapp, 1909)
28. 'Unterschiede aber, die ohne weiteres jedermann auf fallen, treten in Erscheinung, sobald es sich um die Wiedergabe der dritten, der Tiefendimension durch das Auge einerseits und durch die photographische Plattte anderseits handelt. Es ist gewiß schon einem jeden Photographen aufgefallen, daß die photographische Kamera nicht so weit in die Ferne trägt, wie das menschliche Auge. Jeder Photograph wird - wenigstens in den Anfängen seiner Laufbahn die Erfahrung gemacht haben, daß Gegenstände, die seinem Auge noch gar nicht so sehr weit entfernt zu sein schienen, auf der photographischen Platte ganz unverhältnismäßig stark in die Ferne gerückt erschienen.' Ibid., p. 21
29. Rudolf Sandalo, father and son. owned the Atelier de Sandalo. Sandalo pére, a German Czech born in 1869, had settled in Brno before the First World War; his son carried on the family business after the father's death in 1932, first opening a branch office in Prague, then moving during the course of the Second World War to Berlin where he took some of the famous photographs of the Reichskanzlerei of Albert Speer, and finishing his career in the town of Schömberg in the 1950s, where he is last recorded taking pictures for Fritz Breuhaus de Groot. For biographical data on Rudolf Sandalo, I am indebted to Dr. Lenka Kudělková of the Museum of the City of Brno
30. Vladimir Slapeta, Die BrünnerFunktionalisten: Moderne Architektur in Brünn (Exh. cat. Innsbruck, 1985)
31. A view of the rear of the house from the garden below was published in the January issue of bauhaus in 1931
32. Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat graciously showed me her collection of photographs of the building; Lenka Kudělková also very kindly made the contents of the City Museum of Brno accessible to me. Possible additional prints remain in Prague
33. Bruno Taut, Ein Wohnhaus (Stuttgart, W. Keller & Co., 1927)
34. Erich Mendelsohn, Neues Haus, Neue Welt (Berlin, Rudolf Mosse, 1932). The economic situation in Germany after 1929, and the increasing rejec tion of modernism throughout the early 1930s may well have discouraged such a project
35. See my article, 'Tugendhat Frames', Harvard Design Magazine (Autumn 2001), for a preliminary discussion of the photographs before my first visit to the building in 2002
36. Warstat's work on photography was grounded on the discoveries of Hermann von Helmholtz on optical perception. See in this regard, H. von Helmholtz, Treatise on Physiological Optics, I-III (1856, 1860 and 1867)
37. and idem, On the Relation of Optics to painting (1871-73)
38. Warstat and his contemporaries complained frequently about the variable colour sensitivity of the black and white negative, unequally sensitive to blue and yellow tones
39. 'Ordnet er z.B. im Vordergrunde des Bildes einige wenige großzügige Linien von starker Gefühlswirkung an, so wecken diese das ästhetische Interesse in hohem Maße und beschäftigen es dann auch weiter so intensiv, daß der Künstler es schon wagen kann, im Mittel- und Hintergrund mehr Detail anzubringen, um so mehr, als es hier nach dem, was wir über die Wiedergabe der Raumwerte durch die Platte...auseinandergesetzt haben, in bedeutend verkleinerten Größenverhältnissen erscheint und für unseren Eindruck daher durch den Kontrast zum Vordergrund in größere Ferne gerückt wird.' Warstat, op. cit., p. 65
40. The examples were drawn from Die Photographische Kunst im Jahre 1907, a journal closely involved in the contemporary movement for pictorial or artistic photography (künstlerische Photographie)
41. One of Warstat's most interesting contributions lay in his application of principles of empathy theory to photography. He noted that photography provided a particularly appropriate medium for the kind of visual 'pouring in' of the self that empathetic response implied. Also see Enno Kaufhold, Bilder des Übergangs: zur Mediengeschichte von Fotografie und Malerei in Deutschland um 1900 (Marburg, Jonas Verlag, 1986)
42. and Ulrich Keller, 'Modell Malerei: Die kunstfotografische Bewegung um 1900', in K. Honnef, R. Sachsse, K. Thomas (eds.), Deutsche Fotografie: Macht eines Mediums, 1870-1970 (Bonn, Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1997)
43. Germany joined the movement for artistic or pictorial photography with the First International Exhibition of Amateur Photographers in Hamburg in 1893; Austrian photographers Hugo Henneberg, Hans Watzek, and Heinrich Kuhn had founded a Viennese faction in the early 1890s. For a contemporaneous history of pictorial photography with an internationalist focus (including an American copyright), see Fritz Matthies-Masuren, Künstlerische Photographie (Berlin, Marquardt, 1907)
44. After 1918 Sandalo lost his leadership of the professional photographer's guild of the Brno chamber of commerce; although he retained a Czechoslovak residence permit for the rest of his life; his son Rudolf Sandalo seems never to have succeeded in procuring one, in spite of frequent applications
45. See for example, Carl Franck, 'Aufnahmen von Bauwerken, Städteansichten usw', Photographische Rundschau und Mitteilungen: Zeitschrift für Freunde der Photographie Jhrg. 52 (1915), pp. 227-231. The critic Edmund Wach noted that an exaggerated impression of depth, exacerbated by stopping the lens down, is only recommended for photographs of an 'artistic character'
46. See E. Wach, 'Architekturaufnahmen', Photographische Rundschau und Mitteilungen. Zeitschrift für Freunde der Photographie Jhrg. 51 (1914), pp. 184-187; 197-8
47. Finally, for a correlation between distortion in depth perception and focal length, see Friedrich Hofmann, 'Perspektive und Tiefenwirkung', Photographische Rundschau und Mitteilungen. Zeitschrift für Freunde der Photographie Jhrg. 52(1915), pp. 165-167
48. Moholy's work of this period is particularly suggestive in this regard, but an examination of the compositional habits of a group of modern artists reveals similar compositional interests that were widespread by the late 1920s
49. Meant in a local sense, this rhetorical question is also more broadly posed. During the 1920s, photographers of architecture grew far more confident in a certainty that art photographers had maintained for almost thirty years: that photographic composition demanded the simultaneous surrendering and acceptance of the dominance of perspective
50. For example, Moholy-Nagy had lectured in Brno in 1925, on the subject of his book, Malerei, Photographie, Film, and Karel Teige's famous essay on film, 'Zur ästhetik des Films' was published in the German periodical Kunst für Alle in the same year
51. See Vladimir Birgus, Czech Photographic Avant-Garde 1918-1948 (Cambridge, MA., 2002)
52. Jaromir Funke. 1896-1945. Fotografie (exh. cat. Bochum, Museum Bochum, 1977)
53. Also see here Thomas Kellein, 'Fotografische Komposition in Prag', in Abstrakte Fotografie (Ostfildern-Ruit, Hatje Cantz, 2000), pp. 132-153
54. Bohuslav Fuchs, Masarykův studentský Domov Brno (Brno, 1930)
55. This was also the case when both roles were played by the same person, as when Moholy-Nagy, RengerPatzsch, or a photographer like Sasha Stone doubled as artist and commercial photographer
56. Barthes, commenting on the seemingly evidentiary nature of the photograph, further noted, 'the absence of code disintellectualises the message because it seems to found in nature the signs of culture. This is without a doubt an important historical paradox: the more technology develops the diffusion of information (and notably of images), the more it provides the means of masking the constructed meaning under the appearance of the given meaning.' See R. Barthes, 'The Rhetoric of the Image' in Image, Music, Text (New York, 1977), pp. 45-46
57. Numerous examples might be offered here; for the present discussion, Mies's own perspective sketches, dated after the Tugendhat and Barcelona commissions, mimic the space of these earlier photographs. They are 'wide-angle sketches'. See sketches for the Krefeld Golf Club of 1930, the Gericke House of 1932, and the Hubbe House and Court House Studies of the years following 1934, all in Arthur Drexler, (ed.), The Mies van der Rohe Archive (New York, 1986-1992)
58. My thanks to Tom Drysdale (New York University), for discussions of the effect of different lens varieties on the representation of space, and on lens and camera types in common use in Weimar Germany
59. Karel Teige, 'Zur Ästhetik des Films', Kunst für Alle, 9 (1925), pp. 332-339
60. Barthes blasted this notion apart in his 'Rhetoric of the Image' as follows:'...the distinction between film and photograph is not a simple difference of degree but a radical opposition. Film can no longer be seen as animated photographs: the having-been-there gives way before a being-there of the thing...' op. cit., p. 45
61. '... gerade diese Fläche muß gesprengt werden, um hinter ihr die neue Tiefe, das raumzeitliche Filmkontinuum zu entdecken. Dort und nirgends anders liegt die schöpferische Sphäre des gestaltenden Films! Der poly-dimensionale Raum, den die Bildhauer seit Michelangelos "Grablegung" vergeblich zu gestalten versucht haben, wird einmal mittels raffinierter Filmtechnik lebendig werden.' Theo van Doesburg, 'Film als reine Gestaltung' Die Form, 4 (1929), pp. 241-248. 'Die neue Tiefe' might also be translated as the less evocative 'new depth'
62. Panofsky's famous essay, 'Perspective as Symbolic Form', is pertinent not only for its clear statement of the problematics of perspective, but also for its historiographical timeliness. Written in 1927, Panofsky's essay commented directly on contemporary theorisations of both perspectival space and the so-called 'fourth dimension' embraced by El Lissitzky and others in these years. See also Christopher Wood, 'Introduction', in Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form (New York, Zone Books, 1991)
63. For a fuller discussion of this claim, see my forthcoming Mies van der Rohe's Photographic Architecture