Irmel Kamp – Neues Bauen in Tel Aviv and Brussels

For over four decades Irmel Kamp has been photographing architecture, conducting long-term research projects focused on a single style or region. The current exhibition presents a selection from two of her most substantial bodies of work: Modern Architecture in Tel-Aviv 1930-1939, is the result of a five-year research encompassing more than 600 buildings, realized by Kamp between 1987-1993, prior to the large-scale preservation efforts of the city and to UNESCO’s recognition of it as a world heritage site in 2003; The second project, Les Années Trente, realized between 1996-1997, revolves around modern architecture of the 1930s in Brussels. Both compose an archeology of sorts of a local “International Style”. Rather than depicting “machines for living in” – Le Corbusier’s seminal maxim – the buildings in Irmel Kamp’s photographs are distinctly “lived-in” and not quite so mechanic, imbued with a sense of place and time and a poetics of presence.