Marcel Chassot

Assembling buildings designed by modern star architects from Tadao Ando to Peter Zumthor, this photography book is a total-work-of-art: its felicitous interplay of brilliant architectural photography, exquisite book design, and texts approaching the subject from the angle of the history of thought places Marcel Chassot's imagery within European cultural history. Once it plunges into Chassot's architectural photography, the eye feasts on a wealth of scenes from the repertoire of outstanding international contemporary architecture. Each of the photographs aptly captures a prototypical subject. Colouring, the arrangement of lines, lighting, as well as the photographic means are employed with such precision that viewers feel as if they are in a visual laboratory where photography interprets architecture in its particular language. In his essay the author Wolfgang Meisenheimer looks into the fundamental principles of Chassot's photographic world view and distinguishes between three layers of thought in which the work is rooted: the Euclidian orders, echoes of the modern philosophy of the lived body, and the legacy of Cubism from the beginnings of modern painting.