Epics in the Everyday: Photography, Architecture, and the Problem of Realism (Park Books AG and Rice Architecture), a new book by Rice Architecture Gus Wortham Assistant Professor Jesús Vassallo, proposes an alternative history of both modern architecture and documentary photography through its analysis of a series of collaborations between architects and photographers. The book is now available on Amazon, with a Noon Talk by the author on Monday, March 23, in Farish Gallery, Anderson Hall, at Rice University.
Architecture and photography share the condition of being suspended between the fine arts and the utilitarian. For both, realism is considered a given, something that happens almost by default. From the moment it is taken, a photograph is understood to be a record of what was in front of the camera—just as a building, as soon as it is inhabited, becomes the fixed backdrop for everyday life.
In Epics in the Everyday, Vassallo explores this condition, tracing a series of collaborations between architects and photographers from the postwar years up to the present. Consistently, the subject matter of these collaborations is the built environment, which presents architects and photographers—in different ways—with a mirror that challenges the idea of realism in their respective disciplines. Beyond casting a diagonal light on important developments within the two individual disciplines, the book chronicles an alternative history of both modern architecture and photography and builds a case for a specific type of realism found at their intersection.
“Many critics have attempted to disentangle the Gordian Knot that ties architecture and photography together. Vassallo’s solution is striking and unexpected: Realism. His inspiring book leads through one-and-a-half centuries of visual culture, overthrows the hierarchical distinction between Architecture and building, and anchors architectural practices in the realm of politics and economy. The result is a plea to move architecture back to the center of society,” said Philip Ursprung, chair of the History of Art and Architecture at ETH in Zurich.
Epics in the Everyday is made possible in part by Architecture at Rice—the publication platform of Rice Architecture, an essential medium for sharing projects and ideas developed at the school with audiences worldwide. These publications synthesize a broad spectrum of architectural research into a curated conversation on the current state of the discipline and its engagement with the world.
About the Author
Jesús Vassallo is a Spanish architect and writer, and currently an assistant professor at Rice University. His work focuses on the problem of realism in architecture through the production of design and scholarship. In addition to Epics in the Everyday, he is the author of Seamless: Digital Collage and Dirty Realism in Contemporary Architecture (Park Books, 2016). His articles have been published internationally in magazines such as El Croquis, AA Files, 2G, Log, Harvard Design Magazine, Domus, or Arquitectura Viva.