THE ARCHITECTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Manuel Graça Dias
It took a long time, after 1839 and the first daguerreotypes that reproduced “pictures” placed in front of the photographer (to the joy and astonishment above all of those who had always, secretly and mythically, aspired to be able to one day be fixed on a canvas through the “genius ” of a painter artist), so that photography gained its own status, as is known.
If that date was fundamental for painting — in order to begin to detach itself from the obligation of “reproducing” the real, in order to dedicate itself to what had always truly interested it (the outline, the contrasts, the light, the shadow, the awakening of color or its sudden fading, based on visualized sections of the real world, but also other images: invented, dreamed, derived or unrecognizable) –, for photography itself, the immediate departure from this initial universe of figuration seemed very unlikely and of composition in a mirror, to give back, symbolically, to whom one wished to see portrayed.
However, the “objectivity” of the return of the image gains, there was still the subjective “look” open through the square where the light hit, on the back of the bellows of the photographic cameras. The sublime of art was discovered when the enchantment of re-looking at what we already knew was understood, leaving the “document” guaranteed “in the background” and bringing “forward”, the kind of rectangular renewal that, simultaneously, isolated it from the world and context.
[“Cameras lie so much”, says Bill Watterson through the mouth of Calvin (“Calvin & Hobbes”, Public, October 15, 2002)].
“Documentary” photography came into existence (hence its charm) in this narrow temporal crush, between the happiness of the event, the environment or the action to be reproduced and the envisaged new way of “framing” them (with the assistance of the “technical” , which will allow the best aperture facing the light, the best “focus”, the best depth of field).
“Architectural Photography”, being included in this category, will also require, in addition, an enormous rigor in any of the considered levels.
It will be required, first, that he give us back the understanding of the portrayed space. An impossible task, as space and its multiple dimensions cannot be “trapped” in the two-dimensionality of the perspective convergence of photographic reproduction; but an “approximation”, an “approximation” that awakens in us the memories of other experiences and that suggests to us the type of space, the author’s concerns, what the photographer who inhabited it felt before trying to give it back to us and with the heavy lightness of what surrounds it.
How long (days) will it wait for the sun? That sun — that day — the shadows it casts? Not to “falsify” his stay in the revelation, but because he felt that particular shadow of a summer day characterized (and therefore a good suggestion).
Then the look, that square or frame that is the inside of the frame: how is the architectural photographer going to “frame”? What will you omit? What care and ethics will it surround itself with, with the open box scrutinizing what has been built? Looking for the real? Reviewing the real?
Only then the “technique”, mediating both, requested by both. And representing Architecture will require the illusion of eliminating perspective distortion, finding the non troppo inherited from Renaissance composition, returning to masonry shaped in plan that our gaze, educated by centuries of images, has learned to admit. Fitted lenses and machine batteries come in here; sometimes even a little photoshop, to cancel out premature graffiti, an almost minimal stain or a shadow that only careful observation of the image later revealed.
Show architecture. All architects consider themselves photographers. Vítor Figueiredo speculated on the subject.
What makes architects feel so comfortable out there, knowing that only a few — few — will be interested in photographs?
Architects are moved by architecture: with the architecture of the past, with the modern, with the quality and originality of the space, with the geometric fit of the space that the space will seem to contain. And they want to keep those emotions. They want (they imagine wanting), later on, to be able to look at the piece of reality, mentally recomposing that reality. They want to copy, transport that emotion, recast it, eventually, in other contexts, also real.
Many will therefore stumble into the “objectivity” trap. Others will ramble on about the look, proposing other looks. Few will have the necessary patience to wait, excited, for the morning to wake up, the first ray of sunlight or the last, the long extended shadow, the glow on the ceramic tile, the passing of flocks of birds at the time of the din.
In their solitary activity, they will favor the empty corridors so that they can better, and more at ease, experiment, test, invent the look.
Only when they see a student passing in the distance, in a school on vacation, will they understand how much that figure,