Le Corbusier and Photography Author(S): Beatriz Colomina Source: Assemblage, No

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Le Corbusier and Photography Author(S): Beatriz Colomina Source: Assemblage, No Le Corbusier and Photography Author(s): Beatriz Colomina Source: Assemblage, No. 4 (Oct., 1987), pp. 6-23 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3171032 . Accessed: 22/08/2011 07:13 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Assemblage. http://www.jstor.org Beatriz Colomina Le Corbusier and Photography Beatriz Colomina is Adjunct Assistant The MechanicalEye Professorat Columbia Universityand a Consulting Editor of Assemblage. There is a still from Dziga Vertov'smovie "The Man with the MovieCamera" in whicha humaneye appearssuper- imposedon the reflectedimage of a cameralens, indicat- ing preciselythe point at which the camera- or rather, the conceptionof the worldthat accompaniesit - disso- ciatesitself from a classicaland humanistepisteme. The traditionaldefinition of photography,"a transparent presentationof a realscene," is implicitin the diagram institutedby the analogicalmodel of the cameraobscura - thatwhich wouldpretend to presentto the subjectthe faithful"reproduction" of a realityoutside itself. In this def- inition, photographyis investedin the systemof classical representation.But Dziga Vertovhas not placedhimself behindthe cameralens to use it as an eye, in the wayof a realisticepistemology. Vertov has employedthe lens as a mirror:approaching the camera,the firstthing the eye sees is its own reflectedimage. In film, light leavesits traceson the sensitiveemulsion, imprintingon it permanentshadows. The manipulationof two realities- the superimpositionof two stills, both tracesof materialrealities - producessomething that is alreadyoutside of the logic of "realism."Rather than repre- sent reality,it producesa new reality. Photographyand cinemaseem, on firstreflection, to be mediums.But thatwhich is like 2. Still from Dziga Vertov's The "transparent" transparent, Man with the Movie Camera, the glassin our window,reflects (particularly at ilight)the 1928-29 interiorand superimposesit onto our visionof the exterior. 7 1 (frontispiece).Sigmund Freud'sstudy, Berggasse 19, Vienna,detail of mirrorin the windownear his worktable assemblage 4 3. View of the Cathedral of Esztergom. Photograph by Charles-EdouardJeanneret, 1911, and drawing realized after it. The glass functions as a mirrorwhen the camera obscura as the "formativeperiod" but to his entire lifework).A is lit. journey representsthe possibility of an encounter with "the other." During Le Corbusier'sfirst trip to Algiers, in the Freud placed in the window of his studio, near his work- spring of 1931, he made drawingsof naked Algerian table, a framed mirror. "The mirror(the psyche) is in the women and acquired postcardsof naked natives surrounded same plane as the window. The reflection is also a self- by accoutrementsfrom the oriental bazaar. The Algerian portraitprojected to the outside world."' Freud's mirror, sketches and postcardsseem, at first glance, a ratherordi- placed in the frontier that interior from separates exterior, instance of the mode of a fetishistic undermines its status as a fixed limit. The line of frontier nary ingrained appro- priation of women, of the East, of "the other." As Victor is not a limit that separates,excludes, dissociates, . a Burgin has written: Cartesian limit; the line of frontier is a figure, a conven- tion, its aim is to permit a relation that has to be defined In fetishism,an objectserves in placeof the peniswith which the continuously, it is a "shadowline."2 child wouldendow the woman(her 'incompleteness' threatening the child'sown self-coherence).Fetishism thus accomplishesthat separationof frombelief characteristic of Thinking Photography knowledge representa- tion;its motiveis the unityof the subject.. The photograph In the rare cases when criticism has addressedthe subject [ordrawing or postcard]stands to the subject-vieweras doesthe of Le Corbusier and photographyit has done so from fetishedobject. We knowwe see a two-dimensionalsurface, we believewe look it into three-dimensional within the position that holds photographyas a transparent through space,we cannotdo bothat the same - thereis a and medium of representation,oscillating constantly between a time coming going betweenknowledge and belief.4 realistic interpretationof the medium and a formalistinter- pretation of the object. Guiliano Gresleri'sLe Corbusier: Le Corbusier, as Stanislaus von Moos has noted, turned Viaggio in Oriente shares in this critical investment, partic- this material into preparatorystudies for a projectedmonu- ularly at the delicate point where it takes on the connota- mental figure composition, "the plans of which seem to tions of a nostalgic album by an amateur photographer.3 have occupied Le Corbusierduring many years, if not his The subtitle of this book is indicative of a general, conser- entire life."5 With the reworkingof his own fetishized vative concept of artistic production, Gli inediti di Charles- drawings, Le Corbusierdissolved the object and opened Edouard Jeanneretfot'grafo e scrittore. First, "inediti,"un- the way to a more fruitful method of creation,,perhaps published, hitherto unheard of: Gresleri would seem to reconciling his encounter with the other by re-formingand maintain the notion that the "original"has not yet been re-presentingit. relinquished to reproduction, deriving thereby a presum- Drawing, as has often been noted, plays an essential part ably higher value. Then, Le Corbusier"fotfgrafo" and in Le Corbusier'sprocess of the "appropriation"of the ex- "scrittore":Gresleri projects onto Le Corbusier'swork a terior world. "By workingwith our hands, by Le grid that divides knowledge into watertightcompartments, drawing," Corbusierwrites, enter the house of a we are presenting him as some sort of multitalented individual ca- "we stranger, enriched by the experience, we learn."6And in clear oppo- pable of producing valuable work in different, specialized sition to a passive, consumeristic, fetishistic use of the branches of knowledge, and, of course, misses the point. camera, he writes:"When one travelsand workswith vis- Le Corbusier as photographer,writer, painter, sculptor, ed- ual - architecture, or - one itor, these divisions - often encountered in standardaca- things painting sculpture uses one's eyes and draws, so as to fix down in one's demic criticism - mask what is, in fact, Le Corbusier's deep experience what is seen. Once the impression has been nonacademic method of working. recordedby the pencil, it stays for good - entered, regis- This nonacademic method is manifest in Le Corbusier's tered, inscribed. The camera is a tool for idlers, who use a travels, which played an essential part in his formation (I machine to do their seeing for them."' Certainly state- am not referringhere to what is conventionally understood ments such as this (which accompanies some of Le Corbu- 8 Colomina sier's drawingsof his journey to the Orient published in his late work Creation is a Patient Search)have gained the architect the reputation of a proverbialphobia of the cam- era - a reputation so strong as to make the discoveryof the stock of photographsthat he took while traveling in the East into a "surprise."Yet it is difficult to understandhow this view of Le Corbusier could flourish given such evident X manifestos of a sensibility for the photographicimage as J•' ....... his works. ........ printed ;:i?:: ....J <: .... The material in Viaggio in Oriente reveals the existence of drawings- such as the Cathedral of Esztergom viewed from the Danube - realized "after"photographs.8 This practice of drawing an image after it has been fixed by the camera appearsthroughout Le Corbusier'swork, recalling his no less enigmatic habit of repeatedlysketching his buildings, even long past their final construction. He redrewnot only his own photographsbut also those he encountered in newspapers,catalogues, postcards.The archives of L'Esprit Nouveau hold numerous sketches on tracing paper that are obvious reworkingsof found photo- graphs. These depict such unlikely subjects as horreurs(as Le Corbusier would have said) like "Khai Dinh, the pres- ii ent emperor of Annam" or "The opening of the English Parliament. The king and queen" (taken from L'Illustre and reproducedin L'Art dicoratif d'aujourd'hui),side by / "lp side with a portraitof M. Gaston Doumergue, Presidentof g n .. - ........... the French Republic.9 < ... ... Apparentlyaimless (these drawingswere not intended for ... publication), this activity seems to indicate Le Corbusier's resistanceto a passive intake of photography,to the con- sumption of images occurring in the world of tourism and mass media. In the face of an explosion of information in the illustratednewspapers, industrialcatalogues, and adver- tisements - with their pretense to representreality by ex- tensive documentation, by the addition of "facts"- Le Corbusieroperates by exclusion. In the terms conditioned by the logic of mass media, a photographdoes not have 4. Photographs from L'lllustre specific meaning in itself but rather in its relationshipto
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