An exhibition of images and text, Illustrated Throughout considers the role of architectural photographs in the production and the reception of historical surveys of modern architecture, and the relationship between the photographs and the buildings they represent. What happens when the alternative face of a building is revealed, one that disagrees with its more familiar, famous image, the image that has been endorsed by architectural history? In this exhibition, we suggest that as the image of the building changes, architectural history changes with it. The photograph captures the optical circumstances of a time and place, but its role within architectural history is far from neutral.

Using Kenneth Frampton’s Modern Architecture: A Critical History as our guide, we revisited and rephotographed the buildings that illustrate the book’s fifteenth chapter, “The New Objectivity: Germany, Holland and Switzerland 1923–33.” Our photographs are exhibited alongside the book’s illustrations and are sequenced in the same order that the chapter takes shape. Captions alongside the photographs consider the effects of photographic representation on the understanding of architectural history and its objects.

Illustrated Throughout was developed with the support of the Graduate School of Architecture, Columbia University, and was exhibited there from 26 September–23 October 2004 in coincidence with the VIII International DOCOMOMO Conference, “Import/Export: Postwar Modernism in an Expanding World, 1945–75.” The exhibition subsequently travelled to the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, 7–18 November 2005.

An Exhibition by Chris Barker & Erik Sigge
Design & Text Chris Barker
Photography Chris Barker & Erik Sigge
Printing Bridget Webber
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