Photobooks on Architecture or Architecture Books with Photographs 

Exhibition and talk by Rolf Sachsse, for the 10th edition of PWA. 

This contribution is about the relation between architecture and photography. Up to the 1970s and early 1980s architecture books consisted of photographically illustrated books on architecture. Only when photography itself gained the state of being part of concept art and – later – art history, things changed: More and more books came to the surface that used architecture as a motif for their own photographic interests. Combined with the neo-liberal economy that reduced the lifetime of edifices down to the mere interest rate – basically roughly 12 years – the survival of architecture moved into the production of images. In the 2020s where the selfie is the most practiced form of photography, architecture has become a mere background for influencers – and it is built like that. The lecture explores these developments with samples of the curated exhibition and the author’s own book collection.