Follies and Falsities: Architectural Photography

Author(s): Richard Eoin Nash

Source: PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Vol. 23, No. 2 (May, 2001), pp. 71-74
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of the Performing Arts Journal, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3246512
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 FOLLIESAND FALSITIES
ArchitecturalPhotography
Richard Eoin Nash
SUPERMODEL, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North
Adams, MA, January 15-June 5, 2000.
N ext to RobertRauschenberg's dissolutionof perceivedreality.The ef-
TwoFurlongPiece and along
side the largestgalleryin the
United States there is a small room
with one glass wall containing a glass
door. In the context of the Massachu-
setts Museum of ContemporaryArt
(MassMoCA),it is a broomcloset. One
Saturdaylast May I tried to enter this
room but the door was locked. After a
few inquiries,a securityguardappeared
and opened it up for me-apparently
an oversight since the building was
open that morning.A local of a certain
age, the securityguardcould havebeen
one of the six thousandworkerslaid off
by SpragueElectricwhen its 750,000
squarefoot factoryclosedin 1984, leav-
ing a void now filled by MassMoCA;
severalformer employeesare currently
workingfor the new tenant.
The tiny room is a gallery,the site of
SUPERMODEL,an exhibition of ar-
chitecturalphotographybroadly con-
strued. Eschewing the conventional
documentarytradition of representing
the built environment,the exhibition
takes for its subject the photographic
fect in most casesis the transformation
of imagesof anything-but-building into
seeming-building.BernardVoita con-
trives realityby perspectivalsleight-of-
hand, turning quotidian domestic ob-
jects like Scotch tape dispensersinto
monumentalarchitecture, genericMod-
ernistproductdesignbecominggeneric
Modernist architecture.Martin Dor-
baum creates3-D computer drawings
(not, it should be noted, CAD-based
architecturalrendering)and by means
of a device which transformsbinary
code into structuredlight intensities,
prints them directlyon Polaroids,that
one-timeepitomeof the authenticsnap-
shot. Oliver Boberg (yes, more than
halfthe artistsin this show areGerman)
photographsmodelswhich arecompos-
ites of the vacantdetritusof Wirtshafts-
wunderarchitectureon the working-
classrim of Niirnberg.
Althoughseveralartistsdo photograph
"authentic"buildings,even thesebuild-
ings disclose only deceit. Alexander
Timtschenkodepictsthe LasVegasrec-
reation of the monuments of Paris,
* 71
with a highway in the foreground. revealthe falsewalls,lights,mikebooms,
Miles Coolidge makes images of and wooden step units for ascendingto
Safetyville,a one-thirdscaletown built the elevated stage. (Another of Back-
in Californiain the 1970s, that con- strim'sseries,not includedin this exhi-
tains a Denny's, strip malls, and office bition, is of the fictionalizedinteriorsof
buildings, entirely bereft of human homes of that have become tourist at-
life. Yet these documents of actual tractions.)Dorbaum's3D computercon-
locations seem more fraudulent than structionsthen take that generic posi-
the virtualbuildingsrepresentedin the tion which perceives the "hyperreal"
work of those artistswhose materialis beginning to supersedethe "real"and
unbuilt. In Timtschenko'sParisII, the adds the digital argumentwhereby,as
photographof a real city looks like a Baudrillardanalogized,the map is ante-
collage-the Eiffel Tower and a Pari- rior to its terrain.
sian palace superimposedon a picture
of the outskirtsof a genericAmerican Nonetheless I could not help but feel
city. Coolidge'sworks resemblea com- that there is more than photographic
puter renderingof the kind of three- realityat stakewhenphotographycomes
storysmoked-glassofficebuildingsthat in contact with architecture;I believe
line Americancities' ring roads. the substanceof architectureis altered.
Quite a numberof influentialarchitects
Thus the curatorialfocus could be said of the past threedecades-in particular
to be the epistemologyof photography; the architectswho trainedat the Archi-
the extent to which "photographsre- tecturalAssociationin London in the
mind us that photography is not a late 1960s and the 1970s-have incor-
recordof reality,"according to the mu- porated photographicmedia and film
seum. The curator of the show was to expressand explore their architec-
ElizabethMangini.EversinceBenjamin's turalideas.RemKoolhaas's1972 project
"The Work of Art in the Age of Me- Exodus, or The VoluntaryPrisonersof
chanicalReproduction"criticshave ar- Architecture is, in effect,a photographic
gued the case againstartisticoriginality collage essay, while SMLXLand his
and authenticity;firstin responseto the slidesof Lagos,China, and the Univer-
infinitelyreproduciblephotographand sal headquartersbuilding in Los Ange-
recentlydue to the easewith which any les (shown at a lecture at Columbia
recordof realitycan be altered,falsified, University),demonstratethat this was
or constructedfrom scratchby means not just youthful enthusiasm.Bernard
of digital technology. In many cases Tschumi's1978-82 project"Screenplay
duringthis time the artistwas prosecut- Series"creates architecturalforms by
ing the caseagainstoriginalityandclaims extrapolatingfromstillsof filmssuch as
of authorship-in particular,the con- CitizenKane,Frankenstein, Psycho,and
structedphotographsof RichardPrince, TheBirthof a Nation.
Cindy Sherman,and SherrieLevinein
the 1970s and, later, the scaled-down Thus, while the show does questionthe
miniatures of Laurie Simmons. Em- distinction between art and documen-
blematicof this kind of workis Miriam taryin architecturalrepresentation,it is
Bickstr6m's Brechtian gestus: photo- also part of the very discourse that
graphs of film sets, framed so as to questionsarchitectureas building.Be it

72 * PAJ 68
 Miriam Backstrim, Set Constructions,1995-99. Cibachrome on aluminum,
50 x 64 cm. Photo: Courtesy MassMoCA.

AlexanderTimtschenko,ParisII, 1999. Ilfochromeprint. Photo: CourtesyGalerie

Wittenbrinkand MassMoCA.

NASH / Folliesand Falsities * 73

the cuts left by GordonMatta-Clarkin
existing buildings,the castingof nega-
tive space by Rachel Whiteread (both
representingartists operating outside
the formaldisciplineof architecture),or
the proceduralarchitectureof Arakawa/
Gins, the installations of Diller +
Scofidio, the recent establishmentof
AMO (the virtualfirm createdby Rem
Koolhaasas a virtual mirrorimage of
OMA, Office for MetropolitanArchi-
tecture),architectureappearsnot to re-
quire actual buildingsany more. Why
not thereforesaythatthesephotographic
representationsof imaginarybuildings
at MassMoCA, while addressingthe
epistemic difficulties of photography,
are simultaneouslystaking their claim
to the ontologicalstatusof architecture?
RICHARDEOIN NASH is a performanceartistand a writerof criticism,
fiction, and theatre.
PAJ,NO. 68 (2001) PP.71-74: ? 2001
The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress
74 * PAJ 68
The superreality
of the SUPERMODEL
becomesrealityas it altersit.
Leavingthe exhibition room, I passed
through a vestibuleand, curiosityget-
ting the betterof me, I decidedto peek
through the verticalblinds hanging in
the window of the office that looked
onto the vestibule. As I drew near I
realized this was Thomas Demand's
Fenster(1998)-not a realwindow into
a museum curator'soffice, but a win-
dow neverthelessinto a futurein which
we may need to relinquish much of
what we have heretofore taken for
grantedabout the substantialityof our
built environment;for while Demand's
trompe 'oeilwindow had fooled me, I
felt more edifiedthan silly.