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"It is not only that their eyes revel in the
material; they are also remarkably eager
to create forms in a manner reminiscent of
classical painting. No, these are not rapidly
executed snapshots. Quite the reverse. All
these photographs, like their subjects, are
constructed with tremendous care, moulded
into a form which is intended to be just as
it is and no different."

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The Lure of Architecture
A text by Manfred Sack


Architecture has always exerted a powerful visual appeal, even if that is not the prime reason for its creation. After all, it is ranked not among the visual, but among the useful arts. A building which sends every onlooker into raptures but makes for dismal use is a failure as a building.
Buildings are, nevertheless, there for all to see. But do we always see quite what we are looking at? Are we not frequently astonished by things that may have escaped our attention for years but are captured – or better, discovered – by photographers? Of course they have an advantage over us, because in the course of their work they are able to see the world in a frame, at least at second glance. The viewfinder is an unmatchable aid in their efforts to reproduce an object, placing it within our focus. Why, then, are there at least three different ways to photograph architecture?
There are some photographers who are commissioned by architects to record their brand new products, straight off the drawing-board, in literally virgin condition, before they are effaced for ever, even spoiled or disfigured, once the things are done to them for which they were actually constructed: by owners, tenants, office workers, factory hands, visitors – in short, whoever lives, works, celebrates, holds court or gets drunk in the place. Photographs of this genre, cold and aesthetic, usually have something aseptic and alien about them.
Then there are photographers who see with everyday eyes – the reporters, we might call them. Their visual curiosity is provoked less by a beautiful, perhaps exceptional architecture than by what happens inside it. People mean more to them than the design features of the structure or the atmosphere of the spaces created within.
The third group, meanwhile, are in a way the last on the scene, and this is where Barbara Burg and Oliver Schuh belong. They enjoy the luxury of a precise, artistically trained, often patiently reconnoitred and therefore all the more surprising vision. This always picks out what is special about the building, whatever its type. Or to be more precise, what its peculiar character reveals. Sometimes their pictures show a building in its entirety, with the sky and the immediate environment, with a foreground and background. Sometimes they are prompted to photograph a building in the dark because its uniqueness is not truly revealed until it is illuminated. But what they like best, it seems, is to search out details which reflect the particular appeal of the work and let the fascination take hold from there: the sophistication of an adventurous configuration, an ingenious colour scheme, the inspired use of natural or artificial light, the bizarre twists of a round stairwell apparently receding into the heavens, a strikingly decorative ceiling or roof.
Barbara Burg and Oliver Schuh have discovered such things in European stadia, huge halls, banks, schools, factories, office blocks, museums, monasteries, villas, workshops, stations and terraced housing. It is not only that their eyes revel in the material; they are also remarkably eager to create forms in a manner reminiscent of classical painting. No, these are not rapidly executed snapshots. Quite the reverse. All these photographs, like their subjects, are constructed with tremendous care, moulded into a form which is intended to be just as it is and no different. Symmetry is an ordering principle or perhaps we should say a curiously perfected balancing act. Every photo stands, it does not tilt to the left or right from its frame. Sometimes this order is strictly axial, sometimes the diagonal is the dominant thrust, sometimes wonderful formal tensions evolve, offset by cunning optical counterweights – or held together by some highlight which dominates the image. And so we see buildings, rooms, roofs, stairs which seem to soar elegantly, others which have found repose and exude tranquillity. In all of this we discern a definite will to form. That is why there is nothing cosy about these photographs. Even architect Renzo Piano’s wooden notice-board with its tools and models resembles a stringently ordered, if entertaining composition.
All of which brings us back to the initial statement, which was that good architecture radiates powerful visual temptations. The point is to be receptive to them – and to know how to translate them into rectangular images.