Post-independence in the picture
Don’t be put off by the wordy, formal title: Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age. This is a hugely enjoyable exhibition.
If you are interested “in the way we view architecture”, it has useful insights. But more importantly, it’s got great photos.
My favourite is from Nadav Kander’s “Yangtze – the Long River” series, and shows a picnic under the huge, drab piers of a large bridge, while a boatman patiently waits.
It encapsulates something of a Chinese ability to set up a table and enjoy a meal pretty well anywhere, any time.
Kander’s Yangtze compositions tell a bigger truth about China’s phenomenal economic expansion: the photographs of infrastructure are “set against grand surroundings cloaked in a haze of pollution”.
The pictures from developing countries move from the promise of independence in India to decay in D R Congo and Mozambique to conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The burgeoning of optimism is reflected in Lucien Herve’s pictures of Chandigarh, a city that Nehru declared should be of a design “unfettered by the traditions of the past, a symbol of the nation’s faith in the future.”
A similar confidence was voiced in newly-independent Africa, where modern architecture “symbolised a sense of optimism that permeated the new post-colonial era.”
In Congo, however, optimism was strangled at birth and “Fifty years later many of these government buildings, luxury hotels and administrative offices are in a state of decay, derelict or used for some other purpose… The dilapidated state of the Modernist buildings that were created in numerous African countries when they achieved independence parallels the fate of that utopian ideal.”
Bas Princen’s singular pictures of Amman, the “Cairo ring road” and Dubai are capped by the astonishing image of the Egyptian capital’s “Recycling City”.
In Afghanistan, the convulsions of conflict are only too evident, as are the ironies of history: Simon Norfolk points out that “some of the most nonsensical property developments” taking place in Kabul are in a part of the city that was destroyed by the British in 1842 as collective punishment for the killing of an envoy. The Palace of Culture built by the Soviet Union is a bullet-scarred ruin, and though a Soviet-built swimming pool was expensively restored by USAID, “It is uncertain if it will ever be used.”
Differently sad is Iwan Baan’s study of a luxury block in Caracas, popularly known as Torre David, that fell into decay and more than a decade later was taken over by squatters who did repairs, restored services such as water and electricity, and generally made it habitable.
“In contrast with many popular images of informal settlements, which describe conditions of squalor and menace, chaos and degradation, Baan’s photographs convey scenes of quotidian normality, a barber at work, shops selling essential goods; teenagers goofing around on the basketball court; and confident young men pumping iron against a dramatic vista.”
The Caracas photos lure you into thinking that the exhibition, with its 250-plus works by 18 photographs, finishes on a positive note: after the decay and disappointment seen in pictures from war zones comes a people’s victory.
But the final footnote says: “In summer 2014 the residents of Torre David were evicted.”
· Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age is at the Barbican Centre, Silk Street, until 11 January. Info: http://www.barbican.org.uk/ http://www.barbican.org.uk/news
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