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April 8, 2013
In 2006 The National Architecture Institute, Rotterdam held an exhibition entitled Spectacular City – Photographing the Future, which presented the work of some 30 leading photographers of the urban landscape. It was the first international survey exhibition of this work and it represents the best examples of urban photography from the last ten years.
It was an international group with a particularly strong Dutch representation. The photographers included Olivo Barbieri, Oliver Boberg, Balthasar Burkhard, Vincenzo Castella, Edgar Cleijne, Stéphane Couturier, Thomas Demand, Andreas Gefeller, Geert Goiris, Andreas Gursky, Naoya Hatakeyama, Todd Hido, Dan Holdsworth, Francesco Jodice, Aglaia Konrad, Luisa Lambri, Ine Lamers, Ze Tsung Leong, Armin Linke, Taiji Matsue, Karin Apollonia Müller, Bas Princen, Thomas Ruff, Frank van der Salm, Heidi Specker, Jules Spinatsch, Thomas Struth, Michael Wesely and Edwin Zwakman.
Geert Goiris, Ministry of Transportation, Tbilisi, Georgia , Russia, 2004
They explored the urban liminal spaces and sites in transformation. Over recent years they have provided inspiration for a whole new way of looking at the city. Thanks to their gaze, places that were once considered 'ugly', such as ports, industrial zones, and modern ruins have acquired a new visual quality and meaning.
We have the emergence of this type of architectural photography emerging in the space that has emerged with the decline of the architectural monograph in codex book form. The latter emerged out of the "architectural photography," practice that was traditionally driven by architecture firms, publishing, and PR. An example is the work of Julius Shulman who codified and promoted the central tenets of architectural photography in the modernist era.
The new approach to urban visualization is urbanistic, yet not beholden to the iconic views required by the architectural visualization industry. This work is concerned with skyscraper squats and other modern ruinations, non-places and junkspace
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