Of People and Houses – Livia Corona photographs Styrian Architecture

The photographs in this exhibition were taken by the New York-based Mexican photographer Livia Corona. They show twelve buildings nominated for the Styrian Award for Architecture 2008. They were selected from 111 photos that were taken for the Haus der Architektur Graz 2008/2009 yearbook during a six-week stay.

Unlike classical architectural photography, Corona’s pictures are not limited to the pure documentation of architecture, but can also be seen as independent works of art that focus on the relationship between people and spaces. In the yearbook, as in earlier projects, Corona works with the residents of the buildings, random passers-by or actors employed specifically for the photo session. The aim of this strategy is to break down entrenched conventions in the photographic representation of architecture.

The Haus der Architektur Graz yearbook provides regular documentation of the best new buildings in Graz and Styria, including the winner of the Styrian Award for Architecture. In this fourth edition of the yearbook, a comprehensive new approach is adopted. In a change from previous years, it is no longer a jury who selects the buildings featured in the yearbook, but instead the curator of the Styrian Award for Architecture – this year the Berlin architectural critic Andreas Ruby. In this way a subjective, yet all the more unusually incisive, view of the current architectural scene in Styria is assured, harmoniously complemented with photgraphic documentation of the buildings and their inhabitants by Livia Corona. The depiction of contemporary buildings at the level of architectural criticism and photo art gives the book its complex and multilayered nature.

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