THE SECRET PHOTOGRAPHER

That should never be part of the title of a book about Le Corbusier. But nevertheless, there it is. The full title, Le Corbusier, The Secret Photographer, was published in 2013.

In 2012 at the public library in La Chaux-de-Fonds, thousands of Corb’s photographs were discovered.

One revelation of the find is that Corb took over 6000 photos. And many of them were during his seminal tours thru Turkey and Greece.  He carried two cameras during many of these voyages.

OK, a few things.

If we were teaching history correctly, there would never, ever, be a book that has the word secret in it.  Why is this even a secret?  Because we are taught and culturally conditioned to believe that Corb sketched his way around the Agean Sea.  And from these sketches, which are published in just about every architectural history book, we are led to believe that he internalized the fundamentals with which to change the course of cultural history with in situ sketching.

But the true story is that he spent a lot of this time taking photos.  When you take 6000 of them, that is a lot.  The photo numbering on my iPhone (still using a 4S), for example just turned over at 9999.  And that is after about 4 years of snapping everything under the sun.  So for Corb to take 6000 photos with a relatively new technology while traveling that was at best cumbersome shows his dedication to and interest in photography.

In 2016, there was a traveling photography exhibition in India.  And the reviewer talks about the irony of a photography show about Le Corbusier given that, to use the reviewer’s words, “he did not like photography.”  The fact that a reviewer, even when presented with Corb’s enormous photo output, still writes that he did not like photography, demonstrates how ingrained this cultural meme is.  One of Corb’s famous quotations is that “Cameras get in the way of seeing.”

The fact is that he was keenly aware of the power of photography.  He used the photographer Lucien Herve with great confidence and success.  Many of the photos of his buildings have Corb in the photo and many of them were keenly staged.

All of this ranting can be summarized by saying that it is a cultural fact that we are spoon fed to believe that Corb heroically sketched his way thru the world.  We are also culturally conditioned to believe that he denigrated the photo.  When one history book after another says it, then one assumes it is true.

It is just that is is patently false.

Add this to the list of the cultural lies that these pages struggle to expose so as to resolve include:

-the complete and total inaccuracy of the linear perspective
-our societal acceptance of opacity
-our societal acceptance of the pretty picture
-our societal elevation of the lingual over the visual
-our culturally ingrained rule that we don’t draw from photographs
-the binary of the scientific method and the artistic method

Let’s not have any more books about architecture and architects with the word secret in the title.