By Mitchell De Jarnett, Senior Project Designer
The Architect’s Brother by Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison
I re-encountered this work through a recent post by Lebbeus Woods (whose blog is always worth the time it takes to check it out). The images are excerpted from the book, The Architect’s Brother by Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison ,TWIN PALMS PUBLISHERS • TWELVETREES PRESS.
Published in 2000, it remains a compelling, critical, and absolutely accessible pictorial essay on humanity’s relationship to the natural and constructed environments on which all of our lives depend.
The work is described by Robert ParkeHarrison as follows:
“I want to make images that have open, narrative qualities, and ought to suggest ideas about human limits. I want there to be a combination of the past juxtaposed with the modern. I use nature to symbolize the search, saving a tree, watering the earth. In this fabricated world, strange clouds of smog float by; there are holes in the sky. These mythic images mirror our world, where nature is domesticated, controlled, and destroyed. Through my work I explore technology and poetry of existence. These can be very heavy, overly didactic issues to convey in art, so I choose to portray them through a more theatrically absurd approach.”
It is worth noting that the ParkeHarrisons control the production for their work very carefully and for this project they relied exclusively on analogue processes, resisting all temptations to put their necks into the Adobe Creative Suite noose in order to produce the work. According to PIPE “[T]he ParkeHarrisons printed their photographs from large paper negatives made by cutting and pasting a variety of images together. The underlying mechanics of this technique–including the seams between individual images–are carefully painted out in the negative. A photographic print is then made, which is often painted with a layer of varnish or beeswax. This genuinely original technique, combined with their elaborate process of set construction, crosses many creative boundaries. The result is a fascinating hybrid of sculpture, performance, painting and photography.”
Echoes of Chris Markers’ 1962 low-tech masterpiece, La Jetee , reverberate throughout the The Architect’s Brother. Markers’ 27 minute film, so perfectly composed of still photographs that one ceases to notice that they do not actually move, has been a touchstone for any artist interested in constructing fluid narratives from static images. The The Architect’s Brother is a book that is absolutely cinematic, creating a suite of still images which move us to contemplate our own roles and responsibilities in the design of urban environments in the 21st century. The Architect’s Brother exposes the dilemma in which we as architects, find ourselves today, namely; how does one create buildings and cities which resonate spiritually, culturally and technically in a time of environmental crisis?
All images copyright www.parkeharrison.com/
