A world-renowned architecture photographer Iwan Baan’s exhibition ‘Iwan Baan: Prague Diary’ is held at the Center for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning (CAMP) in Prague until August 31.
The Dutch-born photographer Iwan Baan is known for his work that captures life within architecture and its relationship with space. His work is based on documentary photography and reveals a way of reading spatial context. International architects such as Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito, Sana, Morphosis, and others have commissioned him to give their work a sense of place and narrative within their environments
In the summer of 2022, Iwan Van visited Prague for the first time in his life and photographed on foot, on a bike, and from a helicopter to capture landscapes in and around the center of Prague and along the Vltava River. He presents his work, which shows the city as raw, often neglected, and miles away from the glossy pictures in tourist guides. He focuses on buildings near the river, industrial buildings, transport infrastructure, islands, the landscape, and the busy and quiet life around it.
The exhibition is conceived as an imaginary urban pilgrimage, permeated by four thematic levels – first contact with the city, the center, the periphery, and natural scenery. The photographs on the wall of the exhibition hall are unedited. A large-format projection of the exhibition hall is dedicated to Baan’s aerial photographs – visitors to the exhibition thus have the unique opportunity to see Prague from unusual angles and in unsuspected contexts. Accompanied by an audio commentary by Iwan Baan himself, the visitor can thus get a glimpse into the “behind the scenes” of the photographer’s creative method.
His intuitive way of looking at the city reminds us that what fills the urban space is not the visible, manicured splendor, but the traces of daily life within it, and that in between there are always people, nature, and a sense of relaxation.
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