Open lecture: Photobooks on Architecture and their Visual Rhetoric

This lecture will focus on photobooks as contexts for the representation of architecture. It will critically reflect on the mediality of books and what it does to the presentation and reception of photographs, and it will put into perspective how image-driven books are instrumental in the production of meaning in architecture.

Drawing on recent research on photobooks, their history and historiography, this lecture will take as its point of departure a specific case: visionary German publisher Karl Robert Langewiesche’s influential mass-produced book series from the beginning of the 20th century: Die Blauen Bücher – in which the dissemination of architecture and architectural typologies are radically rethought for a modern and visually-oriented audience.

Anne Elisabeth Toft (Architect, PhD, AARCH)

Anne Elisabeth Toft, Architect, PhD specializes in architectural photography. She is an Associate Professor at the Aarhus School of Architecture. She has participated in group and solo exhibitions on architecture and architectural photography in Denmark and abroad. She has curated exhibitions on architecture and photography, and she has written extensively about architecture, architectural education, architectural photography, and the visual arts.