Shaping the City: architectural b&w photo-essay
“Cities are unable to express themselves, but we always try to give them a voice.”
In this b&w photo-essay that captures the beauty of everyday and often unremarkable architecture, we invite you to reflect on how the urban spaces changes over time, leaving its mark on every corner and telling silent stories through its structures.
In-house crafted project
Year: 2007
“Always with the same point of view, I’ve collected spaces from cities such as Bilbao, Berlin, La Habana, Lisbon and others. A point of view borrowed from Canaletto’s “vedute” (exquisite 17th-century representations of the city in which architecture played a major role in paintings and engravings), as well as from 20th-century painters and photographers who have used this point of view (from Edward Hopper to William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander, George Tice, Stephen Shore or Gabriele Basilico).
I am not particularly interested in spectacular or iconic buildings, or even the most architecturally important ones, but in the contrast of volumes, textures and meanings within a small habitat located within another larger one, the city itself. It can be an intersection, a backyard or a shopping centre; it’s when the urban elements are well organised that this place, however humble, makes visual sense and is better understood.”
“Although cars, people, lamps and cables are part of the city and have the same importance as buildings on an abstract level of the image, buildings are the main characters in my photographs because they are the immutable witnesses of history. They will always tell us the truth about a place.”
