On the role of architectural and urban photography in social reform and public conscience
In the latter half of the nineteenth century photographs played a major role in the social reform movements addressing the consequences of urbanization and mass manufacturing (Marien 2012: 201). The effect would be to reinforce “ethnic stereotypes and clichés about urban workers and the poor”, a statement which Marien exemplifies in citing the work of Chicago photographer Sigmund Krausz (idem: 202). The exposure of squalor and deprivation would ultimately objectify the poor as inferior, whilst creating the condition of “compassion fatigue”, wherein increased photographic coverage in media results in a decline in public response (idem: 203). Reform photography existed in many forms in the years that spanned the turn of the century, such as in the studies of slums by photographer Thomas Annan as commissioned by the Glasgow City Improvement Trust (Baldwin 2016: 11 and Fig. 1) and the Berlin Housing Enquiry (Marien 2012: 203).
Fig. 1 Thomas Annan, 1868. Close No. 61 Saltmarket. [21 × 16.6 cm Negative 1868; Print 1900, Photogravure]
Social documentary of this type “aimed to inform, educate, excite, and to disseminate the ‘truth’ about an issue” alongside written texts (Bate 2016: 61). Bate states that these social documentaries had the aim of increasing knowledge, through the principle of seeing factual evidence of the truth (idem).
The dystopian image of the world inhabited by the poor at this time can be compared to the “ideal city” communicated through photography in the same period. For example, crafted depictions of neo-classical architecture by Charles Dudley Arnold celebrate the advancement of American culture, with these images being compared to the paintings in Thomas Cole’s series The Course of Empire, in particular to the work The Consummation of Empire (Marien 2012: 207). Marien posits that in the images “the presence of people was minimized, thereby magnifying a vision of order” (idem). Further consideration of Fig. 2 would suggest that the Stars and Stripes in the foreground is the defining statement of this order, and what appear to be miniscule flags of other countries demonstrate to the viewers the power of America.
Fig. 2 Charles Dudley Arnold (1893) Basin and the Court of Honor. [Dimensions unknown, Platinum print]
Reconstruction in Europe in the 1920s, framed by urgency in a definitive social and political context, constituted the opening of an opportunity for photography in the continent. At this time the German Bauhaus emerged with reconstruction as its principal philosophy, binding art, design, and architecture within its social remit. In this period, modernism and photography went hand in hand. For example, the planning objective for the estates of the “New Frankfurt” was the embodiment of the form follows function principle and the rejection of any added architectural detail. Aligned uniformity “would contribute to the moulding of a collective mentality” (Gössel and Leuthäuser 2001: 154). In parallel, Soviet Constructivism would lay claim to its “democratization of artistic practices in the services of social and cultural revolution within which photography, by its enquiring nature and its ubiquity, could play a leading role” (Wells 2015: 308-312). It is suggested that further research could show that, through a process of mutual cross-fertilisation, architecture and its portrayal in photographic image, and the photographic image’s influence on architecture, were perhaps never greater, yet the extent to which the photographic image communicated this to the broader public is not apparent.
These avant-garde movements in Europe in the inter-war years would not feature prominently in the galleries of the art world (Wells 2015: 308), whereas the earlier social reform documentary images had found an established place there. Such images were displayed in museums and galleries as documentaries or photojournalism, but by the end of the twentieth century the world of visual and photographic arts was no longer considering art photography and documentary photography as having separate lines of development (Marien 2012: 416). By this time artists and photographers alike have distanced themselves from theory that documentary photography embodies the truth. The turn towards the multiplicity of observation and interpretation, as opposed to social change through imagery, is evidence of this (idem: 416).
Bate (2016: 73) reaffirms convergence of documentary into what is “vaguely called ‘modernist’ art photography” and portrays it as the reinvention of documentary, stemming from the turn to colour in the early 1980s and more recently to higher fidelity images. Stephen Shore’s large format urban street photography would come to be celebrated as the herald of a neutral form of documentary art photography, such as that of Thomas Struth (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3. Thomas Struth, 1990. South Lake Street Apartments 3, Chicago. [46.2 x 58.7cm Gelatin silver print]
Struth catalogued precisely and neutrally the “unselfconscious structures that characterize a culture” portraying the historical transformations of urban environments by depicting the wealth of textures, shapes, volumes, and scale of the urban landscape. Initially, in line with his formal photographic schooling at The Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, Struth “rigorously excluded all traces of subjectivity from his images by using a centralized viewpoint and comparative technique” although his work would later move away from one-point perspective and serial comparison, and in doing so impart meaning to each individual image (Eklund 2004). It can be posited that Struth’s work is culturally detached, starting at a time when the prevalence of positivism as the dominant world-view has not yet been questioned by the ecological turn that would ensue. There is scope for exploring the differences between a neutral point of view, as reflected in the new documentary represented by photographers such as Struth, and an egalitarian point of view as reflected in ecosophical perspectives.
Sources
Baldwin, G. (2016) Points of View: Photographers and Architecture in Architecture in Photographs. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. ISBN-978-1-60606-152-7
Bate, D. (2016) The Composition of Landscapes. In Photography: The Key Concepts (2nd Edition). London: Bloomsbury. ISBN-978-0-8578-5492-6
Eklund, D. (2004) Photography in Düsseldorf. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Available at http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phdu/hd_phdu.htm [Accessed 12 November 2017]
Gössel, P. & Leuthäuser, G. (2001) Architecture in the Twentieth Century. Cologne: Taschen. ISBN-3-8228-1162-9
Marien, M.W. (2014) Photography: A Cultural History (4th Edition). London: Laurence King Publsihing. ISBN: 978-1-78067-332-5
Wells, L. (2015) On and beyond the White Walls - Photography as Art. In: L. Wells (ed.) Photography - a Critical Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN-978-0-415-85429-0
List of illustrations
Annan, T. (1868) Close No. 61 Saltmarket. [negative 1868; print 1900, photogravure] (The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) Available at http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/217714/thomas-annan-close-no-61-saltmarket-scottish-negative-1868-print-1900/ [Accessed 12 November 2017]
Arnold, D. (1893) Basin and the Court of Honor. [platinum print] (Chicago Historical Society, Chicago). Marien, M.W. (2014) Photography: A Cultural History (4th Edition). London: Laurence King Publishing, Fig. 7.11.
Struth, T. (1990) South Lake Street Apartments 3, Chicago. [photograph] (The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection, New York) Available at https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/267196 [Accessed 12 November 2017]