The Death of Buildings
Photographs speak exclusively in the past tense. They color a building’s story with the clarity and finality that only hindsight knows. When looking at an early photograph of the Twin Towers, for instance, it is difficult not to see in them a vulnerability that played no part in their public image until the morning they came down.
Today buildings face death on an entirely different level than the physical. Digital networks, in the course of overtaking every facet of social life, have progressively diminished the relevance of geographic location. What buildings alone could once do—unify the lives and labor of people under a shared roof—lies increasingly in the province of electronic codes and connections. The same technological turn has rewritten the language of the photograph and revised its status as a source of historic truth.
