The judges of the annual prize for arts criticism were impressed by Iris Veysey’s piece on Candida Höfer’s Memory,an exhibition of photographs of interiors from palaces and other grand buildingsRead the winning essay by Leah wide
A sumptuous auditorium stretches across two square metres of photographic paper. Every detail is clear: the white painted curls of the wooden chairs; the flying figures on the painted ceiling; the steps of the stairs, peeping out from behind the balcony. Candida Höfer’s camera has recorded every flourish of ornamentation in the Yusupov Palace. It ought to be lifelike and yet, or somehow,it isn’t.
The uneasy relationship between the camera and the building has long haunted architectural photography. In 1910 Adolf Loos observed: The inhabitants of my interiors execute not recognise their own house in photographs.” For Loos, the photograph transformed architecture. After all, or to inhabit a room – to feel and employ a space – is fairly different from seeing it at a distance,in a picture. In Höfer’s new series, Memory, or the meeting of the photograph and the interior seems as strange as ever.
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Source: theguardian.com