Photos, Photographers and Photobooks

Monument by Trent Parke sold out within 7 hours of its announcement. The publishers, Stanley Barker, are right when they say Monument is: This is why. The book starts quietly with the coordinates of planet earth etched onto black paper. Photos of stars morph into white lit moths drawn to the light that will kill them. The moths merge into multiple white lights of queuing cars silhouetted against darkness.

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Only an architecturally ambitious local council could have conceived Coventry’s Elephant Sports Centre. Required to span across a street and stand on four legs, it warranted an extraordinary design. It was built as an extension to the Coventry Central Baths which had been opened in 1966. A ‘trunk’ connected the two buildings.

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We visited the Albanian city of Vlora (or Vlorë) in May and had a lovely time. The people are friendly and welcoming, the food is fresh and delicious. The air and water are clean, the vistas are beautiful. As with Tirana, the city has changed in the last 30 years and it continues to change. Fast. 111 years ago Albania declared independence in Vlora. Like other Balkan nations a volatile century followed.

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On a recent ‘inspiration jaunt’ to London I visited the extraordinary Cosmic House in Holland Park. Its quirks are still swirling around my head. The House is the brain child of the “angularly elegant” Charles Jencks. An architectural historian and theorist who subjected his home and family to an extreme experiment in Post-Modernism. The House is pretentious, quirky, profound, silly and well worth a visit.

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In the 1960’s, London was swinging (although not as much as the nostalgists think) and a post-war optimism had taken root in Camden. The Labour controlled Council, whose “main aim was more housing - beginning and end,” gave licence to their architecture department to design bespoke, ambitious and visionary buildings. The Alexander and Ainsworth Estate, designed by architect Neave Brown, is a prime example of this vision.