Metropolitan
The construction of an image
Moisés Puente

Moisés Puente, the Spanish author and publisher, analyses a phenomenon of our times, a phenomenon of great importance that has not always been acknowledged: ‘contrary to that which was championed by figures such as Peter Eisenman during the 1990s, architecture is no longer read as a text but is presented as an image’. This change had many effects, such as the transfer of authorship of images from the architect to the photographer of architecture. Puente quotes the example of the well-known Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. When presenting their work at the Fifth Venice Biennale, they decided to exhibit nothing but photographs by four photographic artists. In this brave new world, images of the city and the city of images are the same and appear in representations that are becoming more and more abstract and closer to non-places.