Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age —
A new exhibition at the Barbican Centre, London highlights the work of ground-breaking photographers who have documented the rise of the modern city, and shown new ways to view the urban worlds in which more than half of us now live. From breath-taking shots of New York's skyscrapers rising, to striking depictions of Afghanistan pock-marked by war, "Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age" connects some of the 20th and 21st century's most important images, and the photographers behind them.
Pictured here is a bridge crossing the Yangtse river entitled Chongqing XI by Nadav Kander.
Click through to discover the amazing images.
Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age —
Berenice AbbottBerenice Abbott's celebrated images depict New York on the cusp of becoming the global hub it is today
In one 1932 photo Abbott painstakingly captures the new skyscrapers and a new type of city -- the unsleeping, modernist city with extremes of wealth and poverty -- as it bursts into life
The shot taken in 1934 reportedly required a 15 minute exposure. Abbott captured it and created one of the most enduring shots of the changing city.
Architecture as you've never seen it before —
Berenice AbbottIn another photo from her project "Changing New York" her camera is trained on a wild-looking cliff face which appears alien to the city growing around it.
It is actually a site on Fifth Avenue and the deep foundations of what would become the Art Deco Rockefeller Center.
Architecture as you've never seen it before —
Julius ShulmanIn the post war years, sleek architecture and design captured the public's imagination.
Images of pastel-coloured modernist homes sold a new mid-century dream to aspirant middle classes.
Julius Shulman, a commercial architecture photographer regularly published pictures of these dream homes in glossy magazines, such as Life, House & Garden and Good Housekeeping.
Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age —
Julius ShulmanShulman was among the first photographers to include a residents in his pictures, setting a trend which is now seen across newspapers and magazines.
Working mainly in California, he captured homes designed by the generation's most famous architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Oscar Niemeyer, and Mies van der Rohe.
Architecture as you've never seen it before —
Lucien HervéLucien Hervé's striking images of Chandigarh show a city at the dawn of Indian independence and how modernist design was inspiring a different generation.
The new Indian government commissioned Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier to design a new capital for the Indian Punjab after the end of British rule. The designer was briefed to created "a symbol of the nation's faith in the future" by the first prime minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru.
Architecture as you've never seen it before —
Lucien HervéThese photos, taken of Chandigarh's civic buildings in 1955, use high contrast natural lighting and cut out details of the architecture to highlight "the spirit of places rather than the actual buildings" say the exhibitions curators.
Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age —
Ed Ruscha"Ruscha's images are mementos of the human race taken back with them by visitors from another planet," said writer J G Ballard.
One Sunday morning in 1967, Ed Ruscha hired a helicopter and set out to photograph carparks from a bird's eye view.
Ruscha's images typically focus on seemingly mundane places -- swimming pools, gas stations, and apartment blocks -- but transforms them into something new. Through his lens, they "become abstract compositions of flat ground," say the exhibition's organizers.
Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age —
Stephen ShoreLikewise, Stephen Shore trains his camera on the "quintessential main street" -- the central commercial street of countless American towns, whose unexceptional architecture and identikit features vary little.
Shore uses large format cameras and emulates the composition of the grandiose landscape photographers, such as Ansel Adams, who depicted the American west in a rugged, epic light. And, say organizers, "under Shore's photographic gaze the prosaic and mundane are elevated to the same status."
Architecture as you've never seen it before —
Stephen ShoreHis "Uncommon Places" series was the result of a series of road trips beginning in 1972 which he said aimed to "show people what they were not seeing" in 20th century cities.
The photographer was among the first art photographers to eschew black and white photography in favor of color.
Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age —
Hiroshi SugimotoShowing that architectural photography doesn't have to be in focus, Hiroshi Sugimoto's blurry photographs "evoke the passage of time," say the exhibition curators.
The artist has called it "architecture after the end of the world." This proved prophetic -- Sugimoto's 1997 photo of the New York's World Trade Center was praised for its dream-like view of the monument. Now, it resembles a hazy memory -- "ghostlike," say organizers.
Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age —
Nadav KanderChina's rapid economic transformation was captured by portrait and landscape photographer Nadav Kander in his 4,000 mile journey along the Yangtze River.
The pictures capture the scale of China's infrastructure projects which have profoundly transformed lives and the landscape -- from the river's source in Qinghai Province to booming Shanghai in the east.
"Common man has little say in China's progression and this smallness of the individual is alluded to in the work," says the photographer.
Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age —
Bas PrincenArchitect-turned-photographer Princen says his photographs show "the relation of the man made to the natural... it's not anymore the one versus the other but they are basically one."
His images link together developments on the edges of cities, where buildings are pictured in the process of being demolished or constructed.
Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age —
Bas PrincenIn his 2009 series "Refuge, Five Cities" Princen travels to Istanbul, Cairo, Amman, Beirut and Dubai. The images that he produces seek to make the disparate locations "disappear as individual cities and as specific places, dissolving instead into a new kind of city, an imaginary urban entity," says the artist.
Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age —
Simon NorfolkSimon Norfolk photographs buildings touched by war.
In 2001, he traveled to Afghanistan to record the landscape of a country littered with the ruins of successive conflicts -- from 19th century British campaigns, the Soviet invasion and civil war, to the U.S.-led military action.
Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age —
Simon Norfolk"Norfolk's sublime post-apocalyptic landscapes communicate the impermanence of civilizations... revealing a historical layering of different occupying powers," say the exhibition's organizers.
