For my first planned shoot for the Brutalist, Industrial Aesthetics project, I planned to photograph and capture both the physical buildings and structures that can be found along the southbank area of Central London, and the essence or form that these constructions imbue upon their beholders.
The buildings I intended to capture were the National Theatre, Tate Modern and the civil engineering and architecture that surrounds these places, also built in a style of brutalist modernism.
The location of these buildings are upon the cultural landmark of London’s Southbank, a blistering hotbed of contemporary arts, music and culture. Seeing and experiencing these concrete giants in a style synonymous with a decade long past seemed to almost juxtapose their current modus operandi in a way that was not unwelcome, if anything the union of these two different ethos’s seemed like a symbiotic relationship that allowed the other to continue, the modern culture creating a need for the unpopular, brutal buildings to remain in service past their intended lifecycle, and the strong, stable, secure environment like the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, a space that allows arts to flourish and thrive whilst being protected both physically and psychologically by the fortress that is the former power station’s imposing structure.
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