Fotograf Magazine

The symbiosis of visionary architects with photographers back in the 1960s was as much love at first sight as a marriage of convenience. Passing fascination combined with lasting pragmatism motivated professionals from both fields to join forces in close cooperation – now thanks to the possibilities of the photographic medium they hoped to transform their implausible architectural fantasies into credible propositions by presenting them in a more realistic setting. The Bechers, at that time still little known photographers, took the architectural models designed by the German visionary Wolfgang Döring, situated them on their photos of industrial landscapes and through photomontage created composite images. Arata Isozaki, a contemporary of the Japanese Metabolist Movement, would sketch his urban design visions directly onto the apocalyptic photographs by Shōmei Tōmatsu. And the sculptural projects designed by the Polish sculptor Alina Ślesińska were for a change captured by the influential photographer documenting the Polish neo avant-garde, Eustachy Kossakowski, who turned her small-scale utopian works into monumental architecture by means of a simple photographic trick based on a radical change of scale.