PhD Teaching

Abstract

The course discusses the material encounter of modern architecture and photojournalism as both converged to transform Brasília, the new capital of Brazil designed by Costa and Niemeyer, into a global mass media event. The photographic material produced for magazines promoted images of a new imaginary nation and staged dissonances and microhistories of this massive urban-architectural endeavor.

Objective

To understand the construction process of modern architecture’s photographic representation in international mass media through the collaboration network between photojournalists, editors, illustrated magazines, photo agencies and new technologies. To explore how photojournalism challenges the sterile photographic depiction of modern architecture’s spaces. Instead of abstract conditions and no people, photojournalistic images perform a sort of ‘offstage’, introducing the construction site, everyday events, temporary settlements, imperfections, materials, maintenance, impacts on landscapes and communities. To investigate the exploitative nature and colonial gaze of “humanitarian” photojournalism, and the search for the exotic in faraway lands.

Content

PhD Teaching: The Architecture of the Photograph: Brasília, 1957-1960“ The fact remains that, right from its foundation, Brasilia benefited from a communicative strategy that made the new capital a clearly identifiable and indeed familiar place - even to people who had never visited it.” Maristella Casciato Supported by portable cameras, Kodak films, halftone printing, air travel, media organizations, and the State, photojournalism in its many forms composed a mediatized representation of the Brasilia and its architecture, offering the public a dramatization of modernism’s colonial expansion to frontier territories in Brazil. In this course, we will investigate the published and unpublished material of photojournalists from around the world who flocked to the interior of Brazil to capture the genesis of Brasília. In a construction site that resembled a battlefield, under extreme sun heat, surrounded by mud and red dust, we will follow the steps of Swiss René Burri (Magnum Photos) and Jack Metzger (Comet Photos), Germans Peter Scheier (Pix Publishing) and Michael Friedl (Freelancer), Swedish Ake Borglund (Se Magazine), Hungarian Thomaz Farkas (Freelancer), Ukrainian Dmitri Kessel (Life Magazine), and American Frank Scherchel (Life Magazine). Like detectives, students will investigate analog cameras, films, printing technologies, search for archives, photographs, missing links, clues and contradictions. Like storytellers, they will develop a cohesive visual narrative by arranging existing and imaginary fragments into an exhibition or photo-essay. Assessment based on active participation in interactive seminars and final essay/exhibition.

Resources