Galerie Maubert presents an exhibition by Irmel Kamp: Portraits d’architectures. Franck Balland writes:
Since the late 1970s, Irmel Kamp (1937, Düsseldorf) has been photographing architecture. Her images are characterized by a certain distance from the subject, shown in its entirety, as if seen through the eyes of a wandering passerby. Without seeking to emphasize the volumes or specific shapes of each structure, but with a constant concern to present them within their surrounding environment1, her understated compositions, always in black and white and dominated by a consistently gray sky, serve as a valuable reference on modern architecture in Europe and the Middle East—where she notably photographed over 650 buildings in the White City of Tel Aviv.
The precise approach that Irmel Kamp has developed for these constructions, all carefully studied and selected for their unique characteristics, does not, however, place this work within a typological research similar to that of Bernd and Hilla Becher. The photographer, coming from a family of architects and scientists—and who, due to financial constraints, turned to metallography rather than architecture at the end of high school before fully dedicating herself to photography— instead she pays particular attention to the most spontaneous human interventions, which signal the integration of buildings into a certain social or economic reality.
Thus, her «portraits of architecture,» as the exhibition at Galerie Maubert calls them, are not merely an archive of localized architectural styles or their propagation, but a testament to the attention given to them in the various contexts in which they arise.
The memorial dimension of these images, while not a primary concern of their production (a mining area of La Calamine (Belgium), has gradually disappeared from façades, which now are covered with smoother, easier-to-maintain materials. Installed mostly in large checkerboard patterns, the pre- oxidized zinc sheets bear the marks of exposure to weather or human neglect2.
This, precisely, shapes, beyond the documentary aspect of a now-obsolete use of an industrial material, Irmel Kamp’s photographic practice, as can also be seen in the other series presented in the exhibition (Bruxelles-Brussel and Moderne in Europa). Her interest in the most sophisticated forms of modernist architecture, identified during her travels, as well as her attentive engagement with more regional styles, reveals in the rigor of her shots and methodical prints the inevitable shortcomings of human endeavors. There is nothing tragic here—just a recurrence that sometimes invites a smile, but above all gives this subtle work the ability to make a profound absence its central theme.
Franck Balland
Irmel Kamp : Portraits d’architectures
Until December 7, 2024
Galerie Maubert
20 rue Saint-Gilles
75003 Paris
www.galeriemaubert.com
