“Architecture, utopia and concrete nostalgia” – Interview with Laurent Kronental

Centenaire Claude Parent – Mars 2023

• Aurélien Vernant : What led you to architectural photography?
  

Laurent Kronental : I started photography in 2010, during a 6-month trip to China. I was 22 and amazed by the big cities, fascinated by their permanent metamorphosis and their many paradoxes. I wondered how life and human beings could make their way in this teeming urbanism.

On my return, I discovered an alleyway in Courbevoie that seemed frozen 50 years in the past: the countryside at the foot of the office towers of the La Défense business district! The place seemed unreal. At the same time, I developed an attraction for the architecture of the Grands Ensembles. Two neighborhoods close to home proved to be revealing: “les Damiers” in Courbevoie and “les Tours Aillaud” in Nanterre. These buildings seemed to exist outside of time, as if their raison d’être oscillated between past and future.

As a result, I became increasingly interested in suburban neighborhoods that were often little-known, but in which I sensed great potential. My aim was to use photography to capture and convey a poetic emotion in the face of a world that seemed to be slowly aging, taking with it the memory of a modernist utopia.

• AV : How do you understand the current attraction of architectural photography to the Brutalist movement and the “Concrete Years”?
  

LK : I belong to a generation fascinated by Brutalism, which produced works that were often singular and powerful. This movement captivates me through its relationship with gigantism and a form of excess. It’s minimalist in its absence of ornament. I love its clean lines and imposing geometric shapes, as in the work of Jean Renaudie and Renée Gailhoustet in Ivry sur Seine.

And it’s a trend that rhymes with the Trente Glorieuses, when we imagined a happy future where people could flourish in a society of growth.
I think this appeal is linked to a feeling of nostalgia for what was and what is tending to disappear. Brutalism therefore has to do with ambivalent feelings: love and loathing, attraction and repulsion. Some want to preserve these monumental works, others would like to see them disappear.

• AV : What specifically attracts you to Claude Parent’s buildings? Could it be the brutalist affirmation of architecture, the spatial qualities and graphic nature of his proposals, or the treatment of concrete, or all of the above?
  

LK : I’m fascinated, first of all, by the architect’s philosophy and the strength of his theoretical discourse, which can be felt in all his creations. I’m surprised that he’s so little known to the general public, even though he’s a visionary who breaks radically with the conventional horizontal/vertical relationship to propose an architecture of imbalance, of the oblique, which forces us to think of space differently.

I also find that he magnifies the technique of concrete to create an ethereal architecture open to infinity. His work seems to be the fruit of an ongoing dialogue between art and architecture; it emerges in a form of floating, and is part of an artistic and human timelessness.

Maison Drusch, Versailles, Claude Parent, 1963 © Laurent Kronental, 2022

•  AV : How do you approach each of these “icon houses”? What methodology do you use?

LK : In concrete terms, I first have to get in touch with the various owners of the houses, introduce them to my work and explain my approach.
In this case, it was the Architecture de Collection agency that initially enabled me to discover the Maison Bordeaux-le-Pecq and gain access to it. Later, for the Drusch and Bloc villas, I was able to count on the support of Claude Parent’s family: the help of Chloé and Laszlo Parent was essential, and I’d like to thank them for it.

As for the shoots, I always try to photograph from the heart: when an image stirs my emotions, I know it’s going in the right direction.
During the 1st visit, I define what the most emblematic compositions might be. I often ask myself: “If I had to sum up this place in a few shots, what would they be? I try to stay on site for at least two days, to see how spaces react and transform under the effect of light. I like to work at dawn, dusk and during the blue hours.

Sometimes I have to come back. For example, for the Maison Drusch in Versailles, I discovered it in winter, but it didn’t work. So I photographed it in autumn, to get more contrasts, more marked atmospheres, with the sun still quite high, more conducive to highlighting the façades.

• AV: Did any of the houses you photographed by Claude Parent make a particular impression on you?

LK: I love the uniqueness and atmosphere of each of these houses. I enjoy analyzing Claude Parent’s vocabulary and experiencing the architect’s vision in the service of a unique experience. I always try to capture the way in which the owners have appropriated the space. And then, for me, photography becomes a treasure hunt between the conscious and the unconscious, between my representations, my own history, and that of the house and the architect’s intentions.

The Drusch house and the Bordeaux-le-Pecq house impressed me by the power of their architecture, their disconcerting form and their apparent raw concrete, patinated by time. They are veritable UFOs in the landscape.

Villa Bloc (1959-1962) is a heavenly house built on a steep site at the top of Cap d’Antibes. It is perhaps one of Claude Parent’s most remarkable works in terms of its natural environment. The architecture as much as the landscape charms.

I wanted to emphasize the absence of traditional load-bearing walls, the fact that inside and outside converge and harmonize. This purity, this minimalism, this fusion of the material and the ethereal totally dazzled me.

Villa Bloc, Cap d’Antibes, Claude Parent, 1961 © Laurent Kronental, 2022

• AV: Do you have a favourite shooting technique?

LK: I work with a 4×5 or 6×7 silver camera. It’s a process that induces a certain slowness and pushes me to observe more. I don’t make many images. This allows me to get a better feel for spaces, to immerse myself in what emerges, to listen more attentively to certain intuitions. It’s a contemplative state that I try to create and install. Sometimes, all it takes is a slightly tighter framing or taking two steps to the side to tell a different story.

The room also provides me with a variety of vertical and horizontal off-center angles. While remaining perfectly straight, it’s possible to change the position of the horizon line, to move the subject within my frame. It also offers unique modeling and grain, relief and softness.

It’s also a great exercise not to be able to see your images on the spot (unlike with digital, where you can instantly check a shot). I never know how the film will react. This can lead to pleasant surprises (or unpleasant ones, as there are always a few misfires).

So you have to trust yourself; there’s an element of chance and letting go.

Villa Bloc, Cap d’Antibes, Claude Parent, 1961 © Laurent Kronental, 2022

• AV: Do these architectures mark a turning point in your creative career? Can we speak of a “before” and an “after” Claude Parent?

LK : I have to say that I’m enjoying photographing houses more and more. The first was Maison Bordeaux-le-Pecq, and I’ve really taken a liking to it ever since. This has probably contributed to my desire to create and position myself in this style of shooting. Plus, I love the intimacy of these places. Meeting and chatting with the locals really excites me. 

Observe how they live and interact with the architecture, how they appropriate these exceptional places, how they develop them, how they deposit their history and personality.

• AV: Can you tell us a little about your current projects? Is there any architecture in particular that makes you dream or fantasize? 
  

LK : For the past three years, I’ve been working on a new artistic series, in duo with a photographer friend. It’s a journey between fiction, myth and reality, taking us from a dream paradise to a wilderness. I can’t say much more than that, but it’s about utopias, dreamed and inhabited architectures, models of tomorrow’s cities…
We plan to release a book in a few months’ time. I’m delighted with this new adventure.

In parallel, I regularly collaborate with agencies in the fields of architecture, heritage, construction and design.

Interview by Aurélien Vernant,
director of Architecture de Collection

LAURENT KRONENTAL

An architectural photographer, Laurent Kronental (1987) came to prominence with his “Souvenir d’un futur” series (2011-2015), which highlights the lives of elderly people living in the large-scale housing estates of the Ile-de-France region. He won the Bourse du Talent award in 2015 and the jury prize at the Circulations festival the following year;

His second project, entitled “Les Yeux des Tours” (“The Eyes of the Towers”), explores the interior of a large housing complex, the Tours Aillaud in Nanterre. He invites the viewer to discover the intimacy of the dwelling and trace the individual within this emblematic complex of the Trente Glorieuses. Through his eye and lens, he seeks out the humanity and poetry of large-scale architectural complexes often considered devoid of life and soul;

Laurent Kronental has been exhibited many times, including at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (2015 and 2017), Art Space Boan in Seoul (2016) and the Moscow International Biennial (2017). His work has also been published in numerous consumer and specialist magazines.

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