Stanley Mill, Stroud (built 1819) from the book 'The Functional Tradition'
I am giving a talk on the photography of Eric de Mare at the Architectural Association 36 Bedford Square WC1 on Tuesday 13 May at 6.30. De Mare developed a towering reputation as a photographer in the 1950s, particularly for his images of old industrial buildings, published in the Architectural Review and in the book The Functional Tradition. He introduced a new way of seeing buildings and the urban landscape, which shifted the contemporary culture of architecture in re-presenting what had been overlooked: but his work was also was shaped by a sensibility almost Blakean in its rejection of much of the modern world. His black and white images remain a powerful evocation, precise in their architectural quality, of worlds that are lost.