19.02.10
'From the Radical to the Local'
A new book and exhibition by UK based photographer Nigel Green on the post-war reconstruction architecture of Picardy in Northern France will be published on the 9th of March 2010. The book will be available to the public at the opening of the exhibition at the Maison de l’Architecture in Amiens.
Nigel has been working on the project over the last three years, which was initiated and funded by the Picardy based photographic organisation, Diaphane. The photographs will also be exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles, international photo festival in the summer and at L’Espace Séraphine Louis in Clermont, Oise in the Autumn.
The post-war architectural landscape of Picardy, which includes the department of the Somme, is distinct and inescapable. Suffering devastation in both First and Second World Wars the enormous task of reconstruction encompassed every form of built structure: agricultural, civic, domestic and religious. Entire towns and villages were rebuilt from scratch creating a uniquely 20th century architectural environment; a subject that is, sadly, often absent from wartime and architectural histories as well as guide books to the region. As Nigel says, “It is fascinating to consider how radical ideas in architecture and urbanism become interpreted and manifested in local forms.” Picardy presents an almost textbook example of how universal styles in architecture are adapted to express a regional identity.
Nigel’s project seeks to introduce the subject to a wider public and works on three levels: as a book on reconstruction architecture, as a collection of photographs and as an alternative guide to the region itself. A specially commissioned essay by the architectural historian Martin Meade will accompany the photographs and together they will constitute one the few books available on the subject in English and French. As Nigel notes, “Much attention is given to military history of the war but not to its aftermath.”
Nigel Green has a long-term interest in the subject and in 2001 a project about post-war Calais was published by the Calais Museum of Fine Art. Other projects include a commission by Photoworks to document the Nuclear Power Station complex at Dungeness in Kent with a book of the project was published in 2004. In 2008 he completed a PhD at UCA Maidstone, which looked at the relationship between photography and the representation of modernist architecture. His most recent public commission was by the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill to take the photographs for the exhibition Mind into Matter, which celebrated the 175th anniversary of the RIBA.
Nigel also works as a freelance architectural photographer.
In the near future Nigel is hoping to develop a photographic project, which looks at the legacy of ‘vernacular modernism’ in the architecture of the UK.
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