Image and the Space of On the other hand there is the attempt of the architect to express the topics and the potentialities the Modern City in of new architecture inside the modern cities in a new language. This ambiguity is already in the title Erich Mendelsohn’s to recognize: Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architekten. That means the description of the brutal experience Amerika: Bilderbuch of the cultural shift between old and new world, but together a rethinking about it from a position eines Architekten1 of specific distance (i. e. led by an architect). It is not coincidence that Mendelsohn in his letters described this journey experience as a ”voyage of investigation for eye and brain“.6 Michele Stavagna He wanted to present to the readers straight this entire investigation and the practical develop- ments resulting from it. Here the main difference of his volume compared with American reports or more elaborated studies by other European archi- tects during the Twenties, like the later work by Walther C. Behrendt or the two books by his for- In December 1925 the photobook Amerika by Erich mer employee Richard Neutra.7 Mendelsohn was published. This volume contains In all these contributions the attached pictures mainly the photographs, which the architect had are only illustrations; the emphasis is on the de- taken or borrowed during his study journey to the scription, which tries to be a scientific one. So the United States of America one year before.2 experience of the reader must remain limited, as if The book became a successful bestseller. During he would observe a phenomenon under the micros- the following two years five new editions appeared. cope. Also in photobooks by professional photogra- Afterwards, in 1928 it was again presented in a phers at that time, like the famous volume The revised and enlarged version. Mendelsohn’s book United States: The romantic America by Emil O. participated indeed in the contemporary literary Hoppé (1927), one feels the strong difference to stream of the Americanism, which in Germany was Mendelsohn’s book, which consists of the fact that particularly strong, but it should not be estimated a visual narration developing from the picture as a merely American travel diary.3 sequence is not to be recognized. The photogra- The architect published a sort of travel diary pher seems to have the only one goal to create a from the letters to his wife partially in the daily broad documentation. The result is a series of paper Berliner Tageblatt and then in two architectu- arranged postcards, which do not communicate ral magazines: the German Baukunst and the Dutch with one another. Architectura. The Dutch version magazine was In Mendelsohn’s book the pictures are closely published in May 1925, in German language howe- connected together and arranged as in a telling ver, and is the only one complete and illustrated story. with many original photographs by the architect, ”Tempo“ and ”Concentration” are the keywords, most of which were not later used again. This diary with which the architecture of this photobook is characterized by a fresh narrative style, due to its could be described. In other words: a specification being an extract from personal letters. However, the of the sensory experience of the metropolis, during idea expressed upon his experience is mainly similar simultaneous focusing on the emphasis points. The to those of another German architect who also critic of the Berliner Tageblatt, Fritz Stahl, in the first 1924 travelled to the United States, Adolf Rading.4 review of the book wrote: ”(…) Both the whole and The proper photobook Amerika is a complexly the singularities [are] shown with the help of the structured work, which has above all the goal of unfailingly painting light proof-strongly and con- explaining a new vision on the contemporary city. trollably, so that neither exaggerating, nor reducing This new view should represent the probably future of the existing things is longer possible.“8 developments of the urban phenomena, those, The objective naturalism of this describing model which agreed with the ideas of the new modern has one ideological basis inside the reflections by architecture. This background constitutes the fasci- the sociologist Georg Simmel over the mental pro- nation of this ambiguous book. On the one hand cess of the metropolitan citizen as course of in- the classical topics of the European Americanism creasing dynamic life and consciousness towards are pointed out, that is the fundamental opposition the metropolis phenomenon. The use of modern between civilization and culture, which had been means and instruments, i.e. the camera, is therefore more extensively expressed in Mendelsohn’s letters a necessary condition for the inner construction of from America.5 the book as representation of the contemporary 339 city. There was then the problem of the architecture Mendelsohn wants to make the phenomena of the book, which has to be adapted when descri- understandable and analysable, and refuses a bing the city and its buildings. Mendelsohn seems simple representation of the confusion. The picture to have reflected over this question and selected dimensions correspond with the sharpness of the those from the contemporary artistic experiments of visual field; the image cuts allow the concentration the avant-garde, with which he believed to be able on a certain element, which separates thus from its to represent the metropolis phenomena. environment. ”Tempo; Tempo; Tempo“ is the recurring key- The different cuts of the pictures, as far as it is word on the pages of the typofoto Dynamik der on the still existing originals recognizable, have the Großstadt by László Moholy-Nagy.9 purpose to compare the mechanical photographic Like Mendelsohn, the Hungarian artist wanted capability of the camera with the actual optical per- to represent the dynamics and the rhythm of the ception, which the expert view of the architect can new city, by using a merged arrangement of photo- feedback. Therefore Mendelsohn’s view of the graphy and typographic elements. Mendelsohn modern city is not the layman’s view of a tremen- instead used as few as possible a graphic arrange- dous phenomenon, but an accurate view suggested ment in his book, because he regarded it as incon- for a layman public. This fact explains Mendel- venient to visual perception and distracting over sohn’s private discontent with his finished book: the view. ”some points are missing—he wrote to his wife— Therefore he took examples from the so-called and the logic of the image sequence must often be ‘absolute films’ the possibility of visualizing the rhy- forced to prove its correctness.“13 thm by displacing one picture inside the book page. Two years later, while he prepared the revised The absolute films by Viking Ekkeling and by Hans edition together with a new photobook Russland Richter were exact representations of the rhythmic Europa Amerika, the architect was still more concer- changes of geometrical basic figures, which are ned with this problem: ”(…) nothing appeals more moved with different times on the screen. One finds readily to modern man than picture. He wants to the same geometrical structure of the picture in understand, but quickly, clearly, without a lot of Amerika, when it is observed as frame strip (fig. furrowing of brows and mysticism. And with all this 1).10 It is evident that one may ”read“ the book like the world is mysterious as never before, impenetra- a motion picture, because the largest part of the ble and full of daring possibilities.“14 volume actually consists of sequential photographs The possibilities Mendelsohn writes about —Mendelsohn called it ‘developing’—which the should be briefly analysed in connection to his pho- road perspectives in New York and Chicago shows.11 tobook with his own real architecture. These picture series form mainly the first three While the first three chapters of Amerika explain parts of the book, which reproduce the experience in general the conditions by means of an analytic of the metropolis according to the ideas of the rhy- view, the same view in the second part of the vol- thm and the eye-view. Enlarging the images and ume becomes synthetic: The more exact effects of changing the picture position within the pages the phenomena of the modern metropolis are pre- reproduce the rhythms in the urban space, as it cisely shown. But, again and again, these considera- were described in the words of the architect: tions are to be understood from a European point ”Terrific syncopations of the evening bells, percussi- of view and in sight of Mendelsohn’s own build- on rhythm whipped ‘with cream’ (…) rhythm of the ings. motors and ‘speed of life’, of which they partake, The architect shows herein two different ex- without understanding, that they understand with- amples of the same sights of Broadway, one by day out being able to analyse, analyse, without being and night and in addition as anonymous, positive able to pull it together.“12 example a building by Ely Jacques Kahn, to underli- Fig. 1: Frame stripe from Rhythmus 23 by Hans Richter, 1922–23 (above), Sequence of the first chapter from Amerika, Berlin 1926 (below) 340 ne the necessity for a co-ordination of the adverti- profitable temporary architecture particularly suit- sing lights into the layouts of the buildings (fig. able.16 2).15 By showing a picture series of high-rise build- It still must be examined whether there is a ing to illustrate the historic development of the clear statement concerning town planning in skyscraper-buildings and ending it with an image of Mendelsohn’s photobook. For this purpose it is the Larkin Co. Building by Frank Lloyd Wright, worthwhile to quickly compare both the old and Mendelsohn directs the attention on the problem new editions of the volume.