Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age, Barbican Art Gallery

Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age brings together some of the most important photographs of buildings and urban environments from the 1930's to the present day. It also perfectly continues the Barbican's tradition of foregrounding photography as an art form as well as a key technology in documenting and shaping the modern world. The exhibition begins with American photographer Berenice Abbott, whose science-fiction-esque photographs of New York from the early twentieth century, document the fear and promise of a new type of urban environment. 

Lucien Hervé's stunning pictures of Le Corbusier's ambitious Modernist project in Chandigarh to build a new capital for the Indian Punjab, obsessively captures the spirit of the architect’s oeuvre. Similarly, Luigi Ghirri's photographs of Aldo Rossi's architectural work in the Padana region of Northern Italy express a unique sensitivity to the architect's work which spawned a lifelong friendship. Rossi himself described the photographs as being in dialogue with the architecture.

Interesting counterpoints to these photographs of great architecture in the prime of its life are images of the decaying and the banal. Ed Ruscha's series Some Los Angeles Apartments perfectly emulates the bland, characterless photography of real estate brochures, while Walker Evans' pictures document the harsh conditions of life for the rural poor in the southern states.

Architecture seems to be a natural subject for photography, yet this is the first large scale exhibition in London to specifically address the subject of architectural photography. Including some of the most iconic pictures and architecture of the past hundred years, Constructing Worlds is absolutely not to be missed for anyone interested in the building of the twentieth century.