Subterms
There was, as she intended, a combative note in Minnette de Silva’s idiosyncratic scrapbook of an autobiography, The Life and Work of an Asian Woman Architect. It took the last ten years of her life, and emphasised her role as a nerveless pioneer and professional, instigator of what became known as ‘regional modernism’. Yet for […] More
An index is a list of names or subjects to be cross-referenced; it is a symptom, or an indicator which measures scale, value or success. Our index fingers are termed as such because they are our ‘pointing fingers’ – the fingers with which we single out, select, warn, admonish, unify and praise. In photography, the index is […] More
In 1905, the Architectural Review stated that ‘the architectural historian of the distant future may well be excused if he formulates a theory that there were two Decimus Burtons’. Literally speaking, this was remarkably prescient, for today we associate Burton’s name not only with various inventive classical revival buildings around Regent’s Park and Hyde Park […] More
On 15 August 1947, 33-year-old photographer Homai Vyarawalla squared her lens on a beaming Lord Mountbatten, his right arm waving over the crowds that had gathered at Parliament House in Delhi. As an employee of the British Information Services, Vyarawalla was no stranger to photographing the British viceroy of India, but this was a uniquely […] More
Martin Parr is unexpectedly good at barking. A gruff noise, more ‘ruff’ than ‘woof’. His bark is directed at a permed white dog who is a bit too excited by the occasion to sit still long enough for Parr to photograph it standing between its two owners. Man, woman, and dog stand in front of […] More
The Alton Estate in Roehampton, perhaps the most important complex of 20th-century housing in Britain, is under threat from proposals to demolish the centre of the estate and replace it with a very large, very clashing new development. If it goes ahead the estate, and views from Richmond Park, will be changed for ever. The […] More
In 1962, Latif Al Ani, two years into his stint as lead photographer for Iraq’s Ministry of Information and Guidance, turned his camera to a familiar subject: Jewad Selim’s majestic Monument of Freedom, which spans Baghdad’s central Tahrir Square. Just a short walk from the Tigris river, Selim’s 50-metre-wide bas-relief had been completed in 1959, […] More
There are many architects to whom an old or beautiful building should not be entrusted. Work on such structures requires a certain reticence and modesty, characteristics not often found with very successful practitioners. In the 19th century, that dreadful amateur, Sir Edmund Beckett, aka Lord Grimthorpe, the despoiler of St Alban’s Abbey, is an obvious […] More
