In the second post of our four-part series, previewing Phaidon’s new book by Elias Redstone, Shooting Space: Architecture in Contemporary Photography, we turn our attention to the work of Walter Niedermayr. Plus, here’s a reminder that uncube has four copies to give away; details about how to enter the draw can be found below.
Published on September 29, and encompassing the work of fifty leading photographers such as Annie Leibovitz, Bas Princen, Thomas Struth, Wolfgang Tillmans and Richard Wentworth, Shooting Space celebrates the incredible richness and variety of the featured processes and practitioners – and of the built environment itself – a testament to the fact that architecture has always been one of photography’s central subjects. Continuing the series for which uncube asked Redstone to pick four examples of work from the book under the categories of Construction, Inhabitation, Decay and Destruction, today we present the photographs of Walter Niedermayr along with an extract of commentary from the publication.
WEEK 2: Inhabitation
The work of Walter Niedermayr
“From a scene, I try to frame what interests me: the landscape that is used by man, which is structured. The pure landscape, without human impact, doesn’t fascinate me particularly. Maybe it doesn’t even exist any longer, man has already been everywhere.”
- Walter Niedermayr
Walter Niedermayr is involved in an ongoing photographic study of the works of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa’s practice SANAA. Niedermayr began the series BILDRAUM (Image–Space) in 2001, which evolved from common interests and mutual admiration between the photographer and the architects. For Niedermayr, the photographs do not seek to explain or illustrate SANAA’s architectural projects but rather form part of his investigation as an artist into the perception of space “as a reality occupied and shaped by man”. Working with photography and film, he depicts subjects that have included everything from Alpine landscapes and Iranian cities, but regardless of subject matter, his works are typically presented as diptychs presenting a single impression of a space, while implying a sequence and a shift in perspective.
– Elias Redstone is an independent curator and writer. His exhibitions include Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, and the international touring exhibition Archizines.
The Shooting Space competition draw has now closed.
Shooting Space: Architecture in Contemporary Photography
by Elias Redstone
Phaidon‚ September 2014.
€65.00‚ ISBN: 9780714867427
www.phaidon.com