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LC Foto: Le Corbusier Secret Photographer

Le Corbusier was an expert manipulator of photographs in his lectures and publications, but he always claimed that he abandoned photography at a very young age. Taking a photograph, he said, was allowing the subject to be captured without engaging the mind. Photographers would not agree: taking a good photograph involves preparation, analysis, aesthetic judgement and reflection. Benton argues that this is exactly what we find in the large corpus of photographic work which can now be attributed to Le Corbusier. In the first part of the book, the early photographic activity (1906-1921) is submitted to close scrutiny, in terms of photographic quality, the material culture of the time and the cameras which Le Corbusier used. Based on an analysis of the cameras used by Le Corbusier and an understanding of his detailed movements based on archival research, this book reinterprets the significance of many of the photographs.

The completely unknown body of work (1936-1938) discussed in the second part requires us to fundamentally re-evaluate Le Corbusier’s photographic taste in the 1930s. Benton argues that the 6,000 photographs taken on a spring-wound movie camera represent a significant body of work. The book demonstrates that these negatives, which Le Corbusier never printed up and perhaps never even saw projected, allow us to penetrate deeply into his visual memory and evolving ideas about the world of machines, the cosmic forces of nature, his nostalgia for disappearing crafts and working people, reflections on his paintings and his relationship with his wife and mother. The book provides a new understanding of Le Corbusier’s frame of mind at a difficult time in his life. But it also offers an appeal to evaluate the photographic quality of an outstanding body of work.