The Lives of Documents—Photography as Project

While drawings provide evidence of architectural thinking, and publications disseminate architectural theory and criticism, photographs offer another fundamental means to investigate the built environment and understand architecture. Collecting photography at the CCA predates the formation of the institution, beginning in 1974 and now comprising around 65 000 images that date from the invention of the medium in 1839 to the present. The CCA photography collection offers a research tool and a body of ideas against which the institution invites new readings and contexts to be tested. 

With the launch of The Lives of Documents—Photography as Project, the CCA embarks on a long-term, institution-wide research program to prompt self-reflection on collecting practices and to produce a lasting discursive, cultural, and institutional impact. The project, conceived by CCA Director Giovanna Borasi as a trilogy (2023–2026–2029) leading up to the CCA’s 50th anniversary, centres the study of the institution’s current photography collection and solicits new perspectives on its continuing development as a relevant resource for researchers and practitioners. Each episode of the trilogy is conceived by a team of guest curators, invited to expand the conversation around the collection with new viewpoints, new authors, new acquisitions, and new commissions.   

This first chapter is curated by Bas Princen and Stefano Graziani, two photographers trained as architects who have collaborated with the CCA over the past decade through research (Mellon Multidisciplinary Research Program: Architecture and/for Photography, 2016-2017); publishing (from the CCA Singles series: Stefano Graziani: Documents from Gordon Matta-Clark’s personal library, 2020; and Bas Princen: The Copies, 2023); and exhibition projects (17 Volcanoes, 2016; Besides, History, 2018).  

“Photographic projects in the CCA Collection aren’t single exhibition prints or samples but include several if not all prints in a series, photo books, and albums, and often additional material. In this way, the photography collection follows the general method pursued by the CCA to acquire complete archives from architecture offices. Everything that enters the CCA becomes a research tool.” —Stefano Graziani 

Conceived as a site for discussion and reflection, the project challenges the concept of the documentary in photography while incorporating the distinct personal positions of each author on reality and the built environment. As practitioners, Graziani and Princen are interested in the production and thought processes behind photographic projects, exploring the distinct methodological approaches that transform photographic works into visual arguments.  

“Rather than by using words or by making a design proposal, as with architecture projects, photographers make their visual arguments by organizing images. How do they choose and combine images for a project? How does the form of display—in a book, album, printed as zines or postcards, on a wall—change the way an argument is understood by a viewer?” —Bas Princen 

To offer insight into the lives of documents, the exhibition presents a display of open research, where works of selected authors from the 1960s until today—in the CCA Collection and beyond—are exhibited alongside unpublished projects, books, publication mock-ups, interviews, and research documents. Since the selected authors often understand their work as an ongoing, open process, the curators chose to conduct studio visits and film conversations with artists in different parts of the world, investigating the complexity of artistic approaches, research methodologies, and understandings of the lives of photography projects. This series of oral histories directed by Jonas Spriestersbach will be part of the exhibition and transcribed in parts in the accompanying book.

The Lives of Documents—Photography as Project takes shape of an exhibition (May 3, 2023–March 3, 2024); a publication (Koenig Books/CCA, available this summer); an oral history with participating authors in cinematographic form; a series of commissioned projects; a web issue; and public initiatives.  

With works by Lara Almarcegui; Lewis Baltz; Gabriele Basilico, Stefano Boeri; Bernd and Hilla Becher; Lynne Cohen; Luigi Ghirri; Dan Graham; Jan Groover; Guido Guidi; Naoya Hatakeyama; Takashi Homma; Roni Horn; Douglas Huebler; Annette Kelm; Gert Jan Kocken; Aglaia Konrad; Susanne Kriemann; Sol LeWitt; Armin Linke; Ari Marcopoulos; Gordon Matta-Clark; Richard Misrach; Marianne Mueller; Bruce Nauman; Michael Schmidt; Thomas Struth; Tokuko Ushioda; Jeff Wall; Marianne Wex.

To find out more about our long-term project to examine the contemporary role of photography in the study and practice of architecture, read our special newsletter this week.