shashasha

The publication "The Lives of Documents - Photography as Project" is part of a long-term research program of the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Curated by photographers Stefano Graziani and Bas Princen, the project explores the different methods and approaches photographers can use to capture, represent, and converse about our environment.

In numerous chapters, Graziani and Princen examine the work of Stefano Boeri, Guido Guidi, Naoya Hatakeyama, Takashi Homma, Roni Horn, Annette Kelm, Gert Jan Kocken, Aglaia Konrad, Susanne Kriemann, Armin Linke, Ari Marcopoulos, Richard Misrach, Marianne Mueller, Phyllis Lambert, Tokuko Ushioda, and Jeff Wall, often in collaboration with the artists themselves. In addition to a selection of photographic works, each chapter in "The Lives of Documents - Photography as Project" includes extensive information (often presented in a dialog-like format between Graziani and Princen) as well as interviews with many of the featured artists.

“The project, an open reflection on how past and contemporary image-making practices serve as critical tools for reading our built environment and designing today’s world, embraces the idea of the documentary as an intrinsic quality of photographic language and questions the relevance and topicality of photography as a means of interrogating and interpreting the mechanisms that shape our visible world.”
― from the CCA’s description

As part of the project, the CCA has also produced and uploaded several video interviews, for example with Takashi Homma, Jeff Wall, and the curators Stefano Graziani and Bas Princen.