Brutalism exposed: Photography and the zoom wave

Photography was instrumental in conceiving representation as the effort to grasp the variable rather than the objective appraisal of reality. This paper explores how avant-garde practitioners in the mid-1960s harnessed reproductive technology for its momentary meanings. Using the confluence of the Economist complex, the film Blow-Up, and Archigram 7, the phenomenon is examined in the context of London-based architectural discourse. While the embrace of unstable signification would present further challenges, possibility still dominated over loss at this critical juncture. The allusiveness of representation intimated the potentials of a milieu where nothing stagnated and images, in and of themselves, constituted architectural practice.