Camera Critica

Camera Critica An analysis of the architectural principles behind the photography of Ezra Stoller and Patrick Ward

A Research Paper submitted towards the degree of Master of Architecture at the University of Bath, Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, 2020-21 Markos Spyrides Student No:.149058407 Tutor: Dr. Robert Proctor

Camera Critica An analysis of the architectural principles behind the photography of Ezra Stoller and Patrick Ward

Contents Introduction

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Setting the standard: Ezra Stoller’s photography of Modern architecture

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The MANPLAN photographs: Visual shock therapy for architects

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Conclusion

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Abstract

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Robert Proctor and Matthew Wickens RIBA FHEA of the University of Bath for their help in finding the relevant literature for this paper. I would also like to extend my gratitude to George Lovesmith, who had initially sparked my interest on the topic of people in architectural photography, and has been kind enough to share his opinions on the subject.

This paper examines the ways in which photography can create visual narratives which offer qualitative evaluation of the social impact of architecture and urban design through the subjective documentation of the human experience. The research looks into The Architectural Review’s 1969 MANPLAN series as a case study, identifying its purpose as a critique of British planning and architectural conduct at the time. The recurring theme of human strife across the articles’ photographic essays is analysed in order to evaluate their effectiveness as visual story-telling devices for the experience of the built environment. Subsequently, this use of documentary street photography is compared to mainstream practices in architectural photography during the publication of the Manplan series. The research shows that the proposed method is a valid approach for the appraisal of architecture’s sociological impact, albeit an unnatractive one within established architectural practice due to the commercial nature of the latter. i

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Introduction

Introduction

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Architectural historian Claire Zimmerman argues that despite having technologically evolved past the point when exposures were simply too long to capture human activity, that common practices in architectural photography seemed to prefer the exclusion of people throughout the 20th century.

Indeed, Modernism’s endowing of space and form as the essence of architecture during a time when photography was taking its first steps as an art form gave rise to a canon which would come to define architectural photography; the omission of the human individual. Zimmerman goes on to suggest that, nevertheless, many photographers challenged the notion through the deliberate placement of human figures within architectural photographs, either as a geometric point of reference (scale) or as a didactic aid (building use). 1 Yet one of the most controversial photographic endeavors in British architectural press occurred as a series of issues published over the course of a year by The Architectural Review in 1969. The series was titled ‘MANPLAN’, and was the brainchild of Hubert de Cronin Hastings, then chief editor of the AR. Reflecting on its reception, Tom Picton writes: “...many readers of The Architectural Review were annoyed when the ‘Manplan’ issues published their gloomy pictures. It was like belching in church.” 2 MANPLAN’ had been Hastings’ direct response to New Society’s ‘Non-Plan: An experiment in Freedom’, published just 6 months prior. 3 In it, editors Reyner Banham, Peter Hall, Paul Barker and Cedric Price argued that planning authorities were a hindrance to the organic and efficient progress of the built environment, and proposed that they should instead “...let people shape their 1 Claire Zimmerman, Photographic Architecture in the Twentieth Century (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 141.

2 Tom Picton, ‘The Craven Image Part One’, The Architects’ Journal 170, no. 30 (1979), 176.

3 Erdem Erten, ‘I, The World, The Devil and The Flesh: Manplan, Civilia and H. de C. Hastings’, The Journal of Architecture 17, no. 5 (2012), 712.

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Camera Critica

own environment.” 4 On the other hand, ‘MANPLAN’ questioned “... the dehumanising and insane logic of efficiency and ‘cost effectiveness’ which transcend individual freedom,” 5 and, by extent, the social values which architecture advocates relative the social impact it actually has. To achieve this, Hastings hired photojournalists Patrick Ward, Tony-Ray Jones, Ian Berry and Tim Street-Porter as guest photographers who would produce the images for the 8 issues along with staff photographers. 6 The resulting images seemed to challenge - even reject fundamental norms of architectural photography, such as parallel verticals, contrasting shadows and highlights etc. A significant divergence, and the central focus of this paper, was the photographic depiction of candid, unadulterated moments of social life that were intended to shock the reader.

These were to act as Hastings’ evidence for his appraisal of the sociological repercussions of urban planning in post-war Britain.

This paper aims to analyse the different principles behind mainstream architectural photography at the time versus those presented in the ‘MANPLAN’ photographs. In the first chapter, a selection of images by renowned photographer Ezra Stoller will be qualitatively analysed. These will then be historically and conceptually contextualised in order to spark a discussion that revolves around the social principles on which they are based and those that they aim to convey.

The second chapter will consider the photographs of the first issue, ‘MANPLAN 1: Frustration’ taken by photojournalist Patrick Ward. The same qualitative approach will be used to analyse the images, and the resulting social principles which arise will be discussed in relation to those of the previous chapter.

4 Reyner Banham et al., ‘Non-Plan: An Experiment in Freedom’, New Society 13 (1969): 435.

5 Hubert de Cronin Hastings, ‘MANPLAN: An Objective for the 1970s’, The Architectural Review 146, no. 870 (1969), 88.

6 Valeria Carullo, ‘Tony Ray-Jones and the Manplan Housing survey’, The Journal of Architecture 23, no. 1 (2018), 168.

The aim of this paper is to highlight how, by employing documentary-style photography, architecture can benefit from collective interpretations of social narratives. These can, in turn, provide architecture discourse with a clearer understanding of its sociological impact.

Introduction

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Setting the Standard Ezra Stoller’s photography of Modern architecture

Setting the Standard · Architectural photography and the human figure

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01 Istanbul, 1964 Henri Cartier-Bresson

The use of photojournalists for the production of the ‘MANPLAN’ photographs was championed

by Tom Picton, a photography tutor at London’s Royal College of Art and - notably - former construction worker, who wrote an op-ed on the series’ 10th anniversary. Titled ‘The Craven Image or the apotheosis of the architectural photograph’, the article deconstructs what Picton describes as the “private schizophrenia” of the business of architectural photography, referring to professional architectural photographers as “lackeys to a greedy capitalism”. 7 Despite its colourful language, the article attempts neither to invalidate nor degrade these professionals.

Instead, it aims to encourage skepticism towards the validity of the genre of architectural photography as a means of architectural appraisal.

If we are to question this validity, then we must first understand the principles on which it is built.

lengths, filters, burning and dodging, pushing or pulling film etc. grant some extent of artistic freedom to the photographer. Moreover, further manipulation was exercised in the final cropping and placing of the image in the book from which it is sourced. The result is a reductive - albeit non-transformative - representation of reality. 8 What is represented is one facet of the totality of the set of initial conditions (the people, the stairs, the weather). In her book On Photography, Susan Sontag describes this as photography’s “narrowly selective transparency” (in contrast to painting, which is a form of “narrowly selective interpretation”). 9 Photographs - by design - can never lie, but they are never able tell the whole truth. Instead, they are a means of depicting objective reality in a specific, subjective manner in order to convey a personal experience, feeling or idea.

Photography as reductive realism

The business of architectural photography

Let us begin with the basic nature of photographs.

Photography was initially developed as a means of documenting reality by focusing incident light rays onto photographic surfaces. At first glance, this might present an ‘objective’ method of representation. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photograph of the winding set of stairs in Istanbul (Fig. 01) depict a moment in time and space which did indeed occur. The mustachioed man unquestionably had a cigarette, the lighting suggests that the sky had been partially overcast and each crack in the concrete moulding had that exact shape. Yet, this image does not represent the reality of that place nor those people, but a reality. The man might have shaved the next day, the cracks could have been filled in, and Istanbul’s sky ranges from clear to fully overcast depending on weather conditions. The observer of this image simply sees what the photographer has chosen to show. To do so, Cartier-Bresson had made subjective choices with regards to the capture, development, and printing of that image.

Creative aides such as lenses of varying focal 7 Tom Picton, ‘The Craven Image Part One’(1979), 189.

Ezra Stoller is considered to be one of the best professional architectural photographers to have lived during the 20th century. 10 In an essay he wrote for Perspecta in 1963, he posits that “...there is only one kind of architectural photograph, and that is the one which conveys the architect’s idea.” 11 This implies that the architectural photographer is capable of capturing a reality of the built architecture which resonates, above all, with the architect’s vision. Stoller’s photograph of Le Corbusier’s Notre Dame du Haut (Fig. 02) uses strong tonal contrast to highlight the sculptural elements of the building, while the human silhouette gives the structure a sense of scale and 8 Roland Barthes, ‘The Photographic Message’, in Image-Music-Text, ed. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 17.

9 Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin, 2000), 6.

10 Arthur Drexler, Ezra Stoller: Photographs of Architecture 1939-1980 (New York, NY: Eastern Press, 1981), 1.

11 Ezra Stoller, ‘Photography and the Language of Architecture’, Perspecta 8 (1963), 44.

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02 Le Corbusier, Notre Dame du Haut, 1955, Ronchamp, France Ezra Stoller

04 Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, 60” Solar Telescope, 1962, Kitt Peak, Arizona Ezra Stoller

03 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, Seagram Building, 1958, New York, New York Ezra Stoller

the space underneath the lowest part of the ceiling a sense of intimacy and destination. Even though the typology of the building is somewhat hidden from view, the fact that the figure resembles a priest reminds the viewer that the building is of a religious character. In another of his photographs (Fig. 03), the photographer captures the entrance square of the Seagram Building in New York. The verticals are kept parallel as the building rises out of the frame. The surrounding buildings appear small in their reflection on the curtain wall, and the absolute symmetry of the composition is broken only by the blurred figures walking in arbitrary directions, acting as a counterpoint to the otherwise stable, still skyscraper.

The compositions have been curated to reflect the architects’ design principles, and have made them real by photographing them. The fact that they have been photographed validates the designers’ ability to deliver on their designs of buildings because it shows that their can exist in reality.

It should be obvious that professional architects who commission photographs of their designs would expect the resulting images to show the building in its intended best light. Only then can the building - and by extent the architect’s skillset - be marketed competitively in a commercial setting. Stoller defines this as “the business of architectural photography” 12; essentially, architectural photographs are those that best serve the interest of the architect. It is therefore necessary to make an important distinction when referring to photography in the context of architecture; all architectural photographs depict - to some extent - buildings, but not all photographs of buildings fit Stoller’s definition of architectural photographs. Architectural photography is, first and foremost, a commercial practice in and of itself.

Modernist ideology and its influence on Stoller’s photography In blatantly misquoting a 1938 AR article, Andrew Higgott’s Mediating Modernism nevertheless 12 Stoller, 1963, 44.

references an interesting piece of commentary on the relationship between Modern architecture and the rise of architectural photography. In reviewing The Modern House in England, Hugh Casson had written: “A suspicion that architects are inclined to design for the benefit of other architects, becomes a conviction that architecture, which once lagged behind painting, is now the handmaid of photography.” 13 Evidently, Modernist architectural discourse cannot be overlooked when discussing architectural photography. In Architecture and its interpretations, Juan Pablo Bonta argues that the design philosophy of key Modernist thinkers such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Paul T. Frankl and Walter Gropius revolved around the Platonic notion that for every physical entity there exists a higher concept from which it is derived, and therein lies its true essence. 14 Modernist architecture focused on reducing buildings into an array of forms. Stoller’s photography conveys just that; the images focus primarily on rendering the architecture as a collection of easily discernible patterns and shapes. Yet there is no such thing as an ideal that can be universally understood by all people equally, suggesting that such design principles existed only within western Modernist architectural discourse. 15 As Bonta points out, by rejecting ornament in pursuit of conceptual objectivity, Modernist architecture was, like photography, a form of aesthetic reduction (as epitomised by Mies’ popularisation of “less is more”).16 As a result, Casson was right in suggesting that when such principles were conveyed through architectural photography, while believed to be understood by all, were in reality only effectively decoded by other architects.

13 Hugh Casson, ‘The Modern House in England’, The Architectural Review 83, no. 495 (1938), 90.

14 Juan Pablo Bonta, Architecture and its interpretations (London: Lund Humphries, 1979), 33.

15 Bonta, 1979, 32.

16 Andy Grundberg, ‘The Crisis of the Real: Photography and Postmodernism’, in The Photography Reader, ed. Liz Wells (Oxon: Routledge, 2003), 165.

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05 I. M. Pei, National Center for Atmospheric Research, 1967, Boulder, Colorado Ezra Stoller

07 Kallman and McKinnell, Boston Five Cents Savings Bank, 1972, Boston Massachusetts Ezra Stoller

06 Eero Saarinen, Dulles International Airport, 1964, Chantilly, Virginia Ezra Stoller

The self-perpetuating image of Modern architecture Herein lies the symbiotic, co-dependent relationship between photography and architecture. Since its conception, the genre of architectural photography was to evolve according to architectural principles belonging only to those who practiced architecture. At the same time, architects would develop their work with the foresight that it would be primarily mediated through photography and subsequently assessed by other architects. As Sontag points out, architecture, like all forms of art, would come to be produced with the intent of being photographed. 17 Thus photographs stopped being sites for reproducing architectural work, and became sites for producing architectural ideology. Stoller’s photographs are the sites of production for the Modernist principles of form as envisioned by the designers which had tasked him with the job of giving their ideas flesh.

With that in mind, it is important to note that the manner in which Stoller’s photography only exists through the language of architectural discourse. This raises a key issue when such images become subject of architectural criticism. Every single person who exists in time and space has an existential relationship with their environment, whether it is built or natural. If a photograph is to convey that relationship then its interpretation by one party must be as valid as that of another.

When discussing the subject of meaning in architecture, Bonta proposes that: “We should focus on collective, consensual rather than personal interpretations of architecture or art. We should be concerned with meaning not as seen by a single individual - no matter how qualified that individual might be - but with perceptions of meaning as shared by a whole community and as reflected in that community’s shared behaviour.” 18 17 Sontag, 2000, 149.

18 Bonta, 1979, 65.

Yet each of Stoller’s photographs conveys, by definition, only one iteration of the architecture it depicts: that of the qualified designer. Modern architecture - and therefore architectural photography - was not concerned with projecting meaning as seen by those who lived within and around it, but as seen by those who envisioned it. The visual narratives in Stoller’s photographs are simply aesthetic. If the image does indeed convey the architect’s idea, then the absence of a social narrative in Stoller’s work infers that emphasis was never given on the user’s personal relationship with the building to begin with.

People and anonymity in Stoller’s architectural photography This brings us to the subject of people in architectural photography. Humans are by definition social subjects. Consequently, the scarcity of people in architectural photographs which persisted beyond the turn of the 20th century - technologically unjustifiable given the advances in the field - warrants some skepticism.

Looking again at Stoller’s photographs, the human figure does not form the main subject; it is used as a signifier that informs the reader of the formal aspects of the architecture in question. As Zimmerman points out, the figures here are helping the viewer in understanding the building’s scale or use. A more interesting argument arises from Jeremy Till’s Architecture Depends. Till argues that if Modern architecture was to be reduced to stable, Vitruvian forms, it would have had to be released from the entropy of time. 19 The principle was thus emulated through architectural photography. Humans are the existential manifestation of the passage of time. In the context of ‘timeless’ architecture, they are one of the “stains that time can throw at it”. 20 Photographers such as Maximilian von Karnitschnigg and Paul T. Franck are known to have actively rejected the very notion of ‘staffage’ in architectural photographs. The former is noted 19 Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 79.

20 Till, 2009, 114.

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08 Louis Kahn, Salke Institute for Biological Research, 1977, La Jolla, California Ezra Stoller 09 Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater, 1963, Bear Run, Pennsylvania Ezra Stoller

to have said: “One must remember that the purpose of the exposure is architecture and not the representation of some person. The use of people as staffage in interior photographs is reprehensible.” 21 Nevertheless, people were not altogether absent from Stoller’s photographs. Their identity, however, never forms part of the visual narrative.

The existence of a person relative to the architecture is reduced to either a silhouette (Fig. 02) or a blur (Fig. 03, 07), or is overpowered by the architecture simply in terms of size (Fig. 04, 06, 08).

The result was an architectural photography which disregarded individualism in favour of using the human figure explicitly as a formal, temporal element in a commercial image. In Modernism, architectural photographs did not bother with social narratives, because in photographing a piece of utopia, there exists not a utopian society to inhabit it. Therefore, in order to successfully convey that utopian ideal, human figures were either excluded, or stripped of character to the point where one wonders whether or not it mattered if the figures in Stoller’s photography were either people or dressed-up mannequins.

21 Maximilian von Karnitschnigg, Moderne Architekturphotographie 3 (1927), 44, quoted in Zimmerman, 2014, 335.

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The MANPLAN photographs Visual shock therapy for architects

The MANPLAN photographs · Visual shock herapy for architects

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10 MANPLAN 1: Frustration, pages 166-168 ( foldout), 1969 Patrick Ward

Why photojournalism?

Having discussed the fundamental principles of architectural photography through Stoller’s work, it is easy to see why Hastings refused to employ professional architectural photographers for ‘MANPLAN’. If the aim was to present the consequences of Modern architecture rather than its intentions, then the conventional architectural photograph was ill-suited for the task. The 16

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photographers’ eye would have to be untainted by this “business of architectural photography”. And so the question becomes: why photojournalists specifically?

To answer this, one must inquire into their role in the world of visual media during the middle of the 20th century. Photographing current events (such as human conflict) was initially meant as a method of historical documentation and a

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way to inform people who lived far away from the action. As time went on, these photographs stopped being supplementary evidence to long paragraphs in newspapers and began forming parts of visual stories in magazines such as Vu in France (1929), Life in the USA (1936) and Picture Post in the UK (1938). 22 The acceptance of 22 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Penguin, 2019), 26-27.

photojournalism as not just documentary, but the ability of the photographer to witness and provide a personal, emotional account of events which deeply resonated with the viewer was cemented

by Magnum Photo Agency in 1947, established by a collective of photographers including Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson. 23 Magnum championed the ability of photojournalists “...to 23 Sontag, 2019, 29.

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11 MANPLAN 1: Frustration, pages 170-172 ( foldout), 1968 Patrick Ward

chronicle their own time, be it a time of war or a time of peace, as fair minded witnesses free of chauvinistic prejudices.” 24 It should be made clear that documentary photography does not objectively depict reality.

It is, as previously reasoned, just another form of reductive realism. However, photojournalism 24 Sontag, 2019, 29.

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is based on the principle that by merely bearing witness to reality in a detached way, there is no code in the photograph, no structured language which it needs to communicate. 25 This lends it the ability to focus on Bonta’s notion of ‘collective interpretation’. In contrast, Stoller’s 25 Roland Barthes, ‘The Photographic Message’, in Image-Music-Text, ed. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 17.

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photography is the interpretation of the commissioning architect’s idea as understood by him as a photographer. The two approaches to photography are so vastly different in principle, that director and editor of EXIT magazine Rosa Olivares describes architectural photography as antithetical to photojournalism. 26 26 Rosa Olivares, ‘A Job in the Open Air’, in EXIT 36 (2009), 12.

Although the AR was no stranger to documentarystyle photography in its polemic campaigns, ‘MANPLAN’s guest photojournalists where not hired to simply illustrate Hastings’ critique of British urban planning; they were tasked with articulating its impact on people. 27 The photographers used lightweight 35mm film cameras, and fast black and white film which, 27 Carullo, 2018, 168.

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12 MANPLAN 1: Frustration, page 198, 1969 Patrick Ward 13 Portico of Dominican Church, Cork, 1977 William Rattray

when blown up to the size of a page or even a full three-page foldout (Fig. 10, 11) revealed the film’s prominent grain. The aesthetic was synonymous with documentary photography at the time, as these were the telltale signs of a photographer who found themselves in the midst of an event as it was happening in real-time, and had the necessary tools to photograph it.

Breaking the rules or ignoring canon?

Patrick Ward was the guest photographer for ‘MANPLAN 1: Frustration’. His photograph on page 198, (Fig. 13) shows a student sitting among the banner-plastered columns of the Guildford School of Art entrance portico during the sit-in which took place in 1968. He looks bored despite the ongoing protest, whose severity is accentuated by the contrasting black and white of the posters.

Here, the human figure’s identity and his social nature forms a key role in the narrative. The photograph conveys the relationship between the student and his school as being damaged; as a classical element, the portico is meant to signal order and control, yet here it acts as a platform for a chaotic uprising. It is rendered in shades of grey by the equally neutral tone of the overcast sky. This places it further down on the hierarchy of the tonal composition which is dominated by the elements of the protest. The architecture is depicted as a backdrop for human activity.

The photograph has not been manipulated to create parallel verticals as in Stoller’s photography, and the ambient lighting flattens the whole structure. There seems to be no artistic use of symmetry, and the photograph is cropped awkwardly so that the very tip of the pediment, along with the base of the left-hand side column are clipped out of frame. Even within the scope of British architectural press, the photographic approach to the portico seems out of place.

In 1977, the Architects’Journal held a photography competition. William Rattray’s photograph of the portico of the Dominican Church in Cork by Sir Thomas Deane had won category 4: unjustly

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neglected architects. The rules of architectural photography are followed: parallel verticals, use of strong contrast to convey the structure as an array of forms etc. There is even the absence of ‘staffage’. In their comments, the critics remind the photographers to use appropriate techniques (use of a red filter to darken the sky, use of a tiltshift lens to correct verticals) so that they can achieve a good standard in their architectural photography. The winners were either architects or architectural students. Casson’s then 48 year old conviction that architectural photography is produced for the sake of other architects still held true. However, the last comment reads: “There was a general absence of people [...] and an imagination to take the unusual shot, to offer a personal commentary.” 28 Ward’s photograph of the Guildford School of Art sit-in offers both those elements. Specifically, it is through the presence and identity of the person being photographed that Ward manages to articulate the deteriorating relationship between the student and his institution.

28 Leslie Fairweather, ‘AJ Photography Competition’, The Architects’ Journal 166, no. 41 (1977), 672.

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14 MANPLAN 1: Frustration, page 185, 1968 Patrick Ward

A visual call for empathy

fundamental social problems.

In other images, the focus on people’s personal matters is even greater. On page 185 (Fig. 12) Ward’s snapshot shows a woman being helped out of a car by a pair of service-men while a teenage boy nonchalantly sucks on his index finger. The overcast sky once again gives the scene an ambient lighting. The photographer has not tried to impose a hierarchy on the events taking place; this is a candid shot. The overhead caption suggests the possibility that the woman might be dead. Once again, the photographer focuses on people as the main subjects of the urban landscape.

The ‘architectural element’ in the conventional sense (i.e. the row of terraced housing) is barely discernible behind the ambulance. It takes the back seat given the immediacy of the event that Ward has resonated with and has chosen to document.

These photographs, along with their accompanying text, attempts to agitate the reader on an existential level. The visual depiction and written description of the risk to that student’s education or the fragility of that woman’s life is a means for the photographer and editor to force a reaction out of the reader, and make them take a stance with regards to the scene in front of them.

In contrast to Stoller’s architectural photographs, no discourse is required in order to appropriately respond to this image. There is no rhetoric; the student is simply frustrated, the woman is simply in peril. As stated in the beginning of the issue, the images are addressed to architects, in an attempt to question the ability of their profession to respond to situations such as these. The terms under which these questions arise, however, are not aesthetic; they are social. The images serve as a reminder that the architect has the capacity, and therefore the responsibility, to respond to

The use of photography to evoke feelings of empathy and condemnation of events from which the viewer is far-removed has been extensively discussed in Sontag’s essay on war photography.

In it, she recalls the ability of photojournalism to expose those who are privileged enough to live in peace to the realities of war. Sontag argues that those who consider themselves educated should not recoil from such images, because in doing so, they would have “...failed to hold this reality in mind.” 29 In the case of the ‘MANPLAN’ photographs, the architect-viewer is asked to relate to the reality that is being reproduced in each image - to feel the emotions and struggle of those individuals.

However, editorial assistant to the ‘MANPLAN’ series Peter Baistow, revealed in his interview with Picton that the readers were caught off guard, and that some architects had gone as far as to unsubscribe from the AR following ‘MANPLAN’s publication. 30 Indeed, the journal had even published a letter written to them by one of their subscribers, who expressed his disapproval in the ‘MANPLAN’ series as a serious architectural campaign. 31 As Baistow points out, this dismissal arises from the fact that these readers were not used to assessing photographs of architecture through a medium other than architectural photography, which can be attributed to a preoccupation of both the architectural press as well as its readers with pure aesthetics. 32 29 Sontag, 2019, 4-5.

30 Tom Picton, ‘The Craven Image Part Two’, in The Architects’ Journal 170, no. 31 (1979), 241.

31 James R.G. Thomas, ‘Letters’, in The Architectural Review 200, no. 1193 (1996), 12.

32 Picton,

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Conclusion

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Ezra Stoller’s images of buildings are highly successful in using photographic techniques to emphasise the formal elements of the buildings they depict. They form excellent visuals in discussing aesthetics within the context of architectural discourse and are an homage to the painterly aspects of photography itself. The use of the human figure within these images offers itself as a reference point for the formal and temporal principles of the architecture it is subject to. The lack of a social and historical point of reference, and the sculptural appearance of the architecture all contribute towards the rendering of the building as a blank canvas. The architecture, having been frozen in reality as soon as it has been built, is ready to be inhabited anew by each person who looks at a Stoller photograph, no matter how many decades have passed, regardless if the building still stands or not.

that have the ability to emotionally respond to real-life social problems.

On the other side of the spectrum, Patrick Ward’s grainy 35mm photographs remind the architect that there is more to architecture than pure aesthetics; that architecture encompasses all aspects of human activity, and is just as susceptible to the passage of time as humans are. The images show architecture as it appears at the moment when social interactions are at their climax, because it is to those moments that architecture must be able to respond effectively and meaningfully.

Carullo, Valeria, ‘Tony Ray-Jones and the Manplan Housing survey’, The Journal of Architecture 23, no. 1 (2018), 168-183

This paper has shown that photographs play a vital role in advertising an architect and their practice through their ability to validate, produce and convey architectural principles to a wider audience. However, the highly unpredictable social nature of humans has led to a fear of its inclusion as a main theme in professional architectural photographs. Even though this is justified in the context of architecture as a commercial industry, the research argues that the precedent it has set for the evaluation of buildings within architectural discourse is one which lacks the sociological side of architecture.

Documentary-style photography carries with it an element of universality and immediacy that transcends architecture’s coded visual language and treats architects as above all, human beings 26

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Bibliography Banham, Reyner, Peter Hall, Paul Barker and Cedric Price, ‘Non-Plan: An Experiment in Freedom’, New Society 13 (1969) 435-443.

Barthes, Roland, ‘The Photographic Message’, in Image-Music-Text, ed. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977),14-31 Barthes, Roland ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’, in ImageMusic-Text, ed. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 32-51 Bonta, Juan P., Architecture and its interpretations (London: Lund Humphries, 1979)

Casson, Hugh, ‘The Modern House in England’, The Architectural Review 83, no. 495 (1938), 90 Drexler, Arthur, Ezra Stoller: Photographs of Architecture 1939-1980 (New York, NY: Eastern Press, 1981) Erten, Erdem, ‘I, The World, The Devil and The Flesh: Manplan, Civilia and H. de C. Hastings’, The Journal of Architecture 17, no. 5 (2012), 703-718 Fairweather, Leslie, ‘AJ Photography Competition’, The Architects’ Journal 166, no. 41 (1977), 672-685 Grundberg, Andy, ‘The Crisis of the Real: Photography and Postmodernism’, in The Photography Reader, ed. Liz Wells (Oxon: Routledge, 2003), 164-179 Hastings, Hubert de C., ‘MANPLAN: An Objective for the 1970s’, The Architectural Review 146, no. 870 (1969), 88 Karnitschnigg, Maximilian, Moderne Architekturphotographie 3 (1927), 44 Olivares, Rosa, ‘A Job in the Open Air’, EXIT 36, (2009) Picton, Tom, ‘The Craven Image Part One’, The Architects’ Journal 170, no. 30 (1979), 175-190 Picton, Tom, ‘The Craven Image Part Two’, in The Architects’ Journal 170, no. 31 (1979), 225-242 Sontag, Susan, On Photography (London: Penguin, 2000)

Sontag, Susan, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Penguin, 2019) Stoller, Ezra, ‘Photography and the Language of Architecture’, Perspecta 8 (1963), 43-44 Till, Jeremy, Architecture Depends (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009) Thomas, James R.G, ‘Letters’, in The Architectural Review 200, no. 1193 (1996), 12 Zimmerman, Claire, Photographic Architecture in the Twentieth Century (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014)

List of Figures 1. Istanbul, 1964 Henri Cartier-Bresson, Des Européens (Paris: Maison Européene de la Photographie, 1997), 125 2. Le Corbusier, Notre Dame du Haut, 1955, Ronchamp, France Ezra Stoller, Ezra Stoller: Photographs of Architecture 1939-1980 (New York, NY: Eastern Press, 1981), 7 3. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, Seagram Building, 1958, New York, New York Ezra Stoller, Ezra Stoller: Photographs of Architecture 1939-1980 (New York, NY: Eastern Press, 1981), 5 4. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, 60” Solar Telescope, 1962, Kitt Peak, Arizona Ezra Stoller, Ezra Stoller: Photographs of Architecture 1939-1980 (New York, NY: Eastern Press, 1981), 17 5. I. M. Pei, National Center for Atmospheric Research, 1967, Boulder, Colorado Ezra Stoller, Ezra Stoller: Photographs of Architecture 1939-1980 (New York, NY: Eastern Press, 1981), 16

8. Louis Kahn, Salke Institute for Biological Research, 1977, La Jolla, California Ezra Stoller, Ezra Stoller: Photographs of Architecture 1939-1980 (New York, NY: Eastern Press, 1981), 9 9. Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater, 1963, Bear Run, Pennsylvania Ezra Stoller, Ezra Stoller: Photographs of Architecture 1939-1980 (New York, NY: Eastern Press, 1981), 11 10. MANPLAN 1: Frustration, pages 166-168 (foldout), 1969 Patrick Ward, ‘MANPLAN 1: Frustration’, The Architectural Review 146, no. 871 (1969), 166-168 11. MANPLAN 1: Frustration, pages 170-172 (foldout), 1969 Patrick Ward, ‘MANPLAN 1: Frustration’, The Architectural Review 146, no. 871 (1969), 170-172 12. MANPLAN 1: Frustration, page 198, 1969 Patrick Ward, ‘MANPLAN 1: Frustration’, The Architectural Review 146, no. 871 (1969), 198 13. Portico of Dominican Church, Cork, 1977 William Rattray, ‘AJ Photography Competition’, The Architects’ Journal 166, no. 41 (1977), 679

6. Eero Saarinen, Dulles International Airport, 1964, Chantilly, Virginia Ezra Stoller, Ezra Stoller: Photographs of Architecture 1939-1980 (New York, NY: Eastern Press, 1981), 8

14. MANPLAN 1: Frustration, page 185, 1969 Patrick Ward, ‘MANPLAN 1: Frustration’, The Architectural Review 146, no. 871 (1969), 185

7. Kallman and McKinnell, Boston Five Cents Savings Bank, 1972, Boston Massachusetts Ezra Stoller, Ezra Stoller: Photographs of Architecture 1939-1980 (New York, NY: Eastern Press, 1981), 14

Cover page Left: Ezra Stoller, Frank Lloyd Wright, Guggenheim Museum, 1959, New York New York Right: Patrick Ward, ‘MANPLAN 1: Frustration’, The Architectural Review 146, no. 871 (1969), 366 Conclusion

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