All works of architecture are destined to ruin, but what happens afterwards–how does architecture go beyond ruin? Thomas Jorion‘s “Silencio” photo series may not have any answers to that question, but the abandoned infrastructures which it frames have everything to do with the current trend in photographing ruined architecture (sometimes known as “ruin porn“, in the pejorative, of course). What is it about these derelict structures  that makes them so undeniaby seductive, and how have sparked such intense interest in the modern ruin? Click for more.

Based out of Paris, Jorion’s work is imbued with a romantic tendency so ingrained in the city’s urban fabric and history–or at least those aspects of which have been preserved for touristic or nationalistic purposes. Yet Jorion, along with his contemporaries, subverts this romanticism–the kind of which inspired the Romantic fascination with ruins–by surveying not the ruins of a long-ago belle epoque or renaissance, but, instead, examining the remnants of recently-eclipsed modernism, now rendered obsolescent.

Jorion’s photographs of imposing, rationalist infrastructure render them in a soft, almost sympathetic glow, depicting huge, lofty spaces made timid by the supposed failures of their founding utopian goals. Jorion, however refrains from anthromorphisizing his subjects and is more concerned with spatial and atmospheric conditions,which he manipulates to create scenes of quiet grandeur. The geist has come and gone, now what?

by Samuel Medina

posted in New Projects Uncategorized

tagged modernism, photography, ruin, ruin porn, Thomas Jorion

more articles by Samuel Medina