Aware of the complex language that represents everything architectural projectwhether one of large dimensions or intimate designs of interiors, the architect Alfonso López Baz (CDMX, 1947), who, together with his partner Javier Calleja (1944-2020), has made outstanding contributions to the architecture Mexican of the last decades, exhibits in the Franz Mayer museum his first photography exhibition, The architect’s eye.
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This is a selection of 51 images, of a total of the 250 that make up his homonymous book, published by the Arquine publishing house, which were taken over 20 years. In them it is possible to see screenshots of constructions, considered “milestones of the modern architecture”, from different countries, including Japan, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, the United States and Mexico.
“This exposure corresponds to its name, because the gaze of a photographer and that of an architect are very different, although what they both focus on with a camera is architecture. Meanwhile he photographer Of course, he seeks the best angles, the architect tries to understand the constructions from the architecture itself and thus, in some way also, interpret the architect’s vision of one work or another. That is, he looks for what he wanted to say,” explains López Baz, in an interview with The Sun of Mexico.
DIALOGUE PROCESS
About your process photographic, details that among the elements that it seeks to highlight in each capture, are the “scales” and “dimensions”; as well as the use of light and shadow, the latter, particularly used, always in the art of photography. However, López Baz mentions that there are elements that underlie each photographic series that you are preparing to do.
“When I visit a place that I intend to photograph, I usually already know it, because I have seen it in books or magazines. So there is a preliminary study, in which I ask myself, first, what I would like to photograph and, second, what, I start to think, the person would have liked. architect that I would take. That is where the dialogue with the other is made. architectalthough of course everything results from my own conscience,” he points out.
Some of the buildings with which he has entered into these dialogues, and which are part of this exhibition, are the Ground Zero subway station in New York, the architect Santiago Calatrava and the One World Trade Center building, the work of SOM and Liebskind; the expansion of Prado Museum, in Spain, by the architect Rafael Moneo; the Roberto Garza Sada Center Art, Architecture and Designin Monterrey, by Tadao Andō and the Casa Luis Barragán, in Mexico City.
LIFE TESTIMONY
He architect He relates that his interest in Photography He was born when he was 15 years old, still in a world of analog cameras. A hobby that he ended up declining when he felt that developing work, in dark rooms, was very laborious, requiring a lot of environmental care and the use of expensive chemicals.
It would not be until the appearance of the digital camerasthat the architect would revive his interest, and then decide to travel the world in search of dialogue in images with others architectsan act that has become his new passion.
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“Without a doubt, this exhibition is a personal testimony, these Photographs They are my memory. So seeing 51 works collected together for the first time is a privilege. For me this exhibition has been a surprise, I already considered myself well served with the publication of the book.
“I am very happy to have the opportunity to exhibit in a place where great achievements have been made. exhibitionsas the World Press Photo or Steve McCurry, this represents a great opportunity for me, although I don’t compare myself to them in any way,” he concludes.
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