Exhibition: The architecture of Louis Kahn in the photographs of Roberto Schezen

Inaugurated on 17 December 2019 and showing through 2 June 2020, the exhibition “Architecture, Silence and Light. Louis Kahn in the Photographs by Roberto Schezen” is a focus show on the major architectures designed by Louis Kahn seen through the attentive gaze of Milanese photographer Roberto Schezen. Curated by Simona Antonacci and Elena Tinacci, the exhibition was created on the occasion of the acquisition of the archive donated by Mirella Petteni Haggiag to the Photography Collections of the Architecture division of the MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome.
The collection comprises the corpus of photographs taken by Milanese photographer Roberto Schezen for one of the major monographs on Louis I. Kahn, which was published in 2001 by Harry N. Abrams New York and curated by Joseph Rykwert.
Roberto Schezen was born Milan in 1950. Following his architecture studies, in the early 1970s he turned to photography and worked with a number of agencies, first Documents For Press and then Gamma in Paris, authoring numerous photojournalism pieces on the Middle East. Back in Milan in 1976, after his initial interest in advertising photography, he devoted his work almost exclusively to architectural photography. During the course of his photographic research, in addition to palaces, castles, and prestigious European and American residences, his interest was captivated by the buildings designed by Louis Kahn and by Adolf Loos, and the Viennese architecture of the Secession period. Also important are his photographic works on the ancient temples of Mexico and Central America, as well as a number of Italian monuments. He died in New York in 2002.

The exhibition “Architecture, Silence and Light. Louis Kahn in the Photographs by Roberto Schezen” is divided into two sections and allows visitors to rediscover, through Schezen’s photographic representation, some of the main projects designed by Louis Kahn, including the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, the Kimbell Art Museum in Forth Worth, the Phillips Exeter Library in New Hampshire, and the National Assembly of Dhaka.
The photographer’s gaze lingers on and highlights elements such as light, shadow, silence, and order, which are the keywords of Kahn’s design vocabulary and also of Roberto Schezen’s photography.
In the museum, the long entrance wall welcomes visitors on a comprehensive visual journey of discovery of Louis Kahn’s works. There are no descriptions of the individual projects but only the photographic reproductions made from Schezen’s 6x6 colour slides. The architectures are presented by means of both classic framing, which convey the American architect’s rigorous design research mediated by the photographer’s eye, and “daring” visions and alienating details, where Schezen’s interpretation seems freer and more experimental. The architectures are always photographed without people in the frame, as if immersed in a deep silence broken only by Kahn’s thoughts. Short texts by the architect accompany the exhibition, enriching it with a further level of interpretation. The second room of the exhibition is dedicated to the physical materials that are part of the collection, including archive prints made by the author, black and white negatives, and 6x6 and 35mm slides with autograph inscriptions.

(Agnese Bifulco)

Images courtesy of Fondazione MAXXI photo by Roberto Schezen

Title: ARCHITETTURA, SILENZIO E LUCE. Louis Kahn nelle fotografie di Roberto Schezen
curated by Simona Antonacci and Elena Tinacci
Date: 18 dec 2019 – 2 jun 2020
Location: Centro Archivi MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo – Roma, Italy

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GALLERY