Since the late 1970s, Irmel Kamp (1937, Düsseldorf) has been photographing architecture. Her images are characterized by a certain distance from the subject, shown in its entirety, as if seen through the eyes of a wandering passerby. Without seeking to emphasize the volumes or specific shapes of each structure, but with a constant concern to present them within their surrounding environment[1], her understated compositions, always in black and white and dominated by a consistently gray sky, serve as a valuable resource on modern architecture in Europe and the Middle East—where she notably photographed over 650 buildings in the White City of Tel Aviv.

     The precise approach that Irmel Kamp has developed for these constructions, all carefully studied and selected for their unique characteristics, does not, however, place this work within a typological research similar to that of Bernd and Hilla Becher. The photographer, coming from a family of architects and scientists—and who, due to financial constraints, turned to metallography rather than architecture at the end of high school before fully dedicating herself to photography— instead pays particular attention to the most spontaneous human interventions, which signal the integration of buildings into a certain social or economic reality. Thus, her «portraits of architecture », as the exhibition at Galerie Maubert calls them, are not merely an archive of localized architectural styles or their propagation, but a testament to the attention given to them in the various contexts in which they arise.

     The memorial dimension of these images, while not a primary concern of their production (a sensitive and informed approach to architectural constructions that have influenced their surroundings is more clearly discernible), inevitably asserts itself when it reveals vanishing vernacular traditions. The Zink series (1978-1982), the artist’s first major work, serves as a remarkable example in this regard. Irmel Kamp meticulously photographed, over four years, a small area bounded by the cities of Liège (Belgium), Aachen (Germany), and to the north by the Dutch border, capturing the zinc cladding covering the façades of many buildings. This insulation technique, widely used since the late 19th century in this region near the metal mining area of La Calamine (Belgium), has gradually disappeared from façades, which now are covered with smoother, easier-to-maintain materials. Installed mostly in large checkerboard patterns, the pre- oxidized zinc sheets bear the marks of exposure to weathering or human neglect[2].

     This, precisely, shapes, beyond the documentary aspect of a now-obsolete use of an industrial material, Irmel Kamp’s photographic practice, as can also be seen in the other series presented in the exhibition (Bruxelles-Brussel and Moderne in Europa). Her interest in the most sophisticated forms of modernist architecture, identified during her travels, as well as her attentive engagement with more regional styles, reveals in the rigor of her shots and methodical prints the inevitable shortcomings of human endeavors. There is nothing tragic here—just a recurrence that sometimes invites a smile, but above all gives this subtle work the ability to make a profound absence its central theme.

Franck Balland

[1] « Insofar as possible, my photographs always show a part, even a minimal one, of the environment, because the object always shapes its surroundings and is never perceived without it. But at the same time, the environment also shapes the object.» Irmel Kamp, interview with Barbara Hofmann-Johnson and Markus Mascher, in Irmel Kamp, Architekturbilder, Walther König, 2022

[2] As the German art critic Silke Hohmann rightly notes about the zinc in Irmel Kamp’s work: «Its shadows, traces, and lesions constitute a process of information storage in itself. A surface reaction, like the photograph itself.» Irmel Kamp, Zink, Soy Capitan, exhibition text for Galerie Thomas Fischer, 2020.