Text: Ibolya Csengel-Plank

Budapest, XI., Budafoki út 52. Kelenföldi Erőmű, fotó: Galacánu Efstatia, 2008

“In those many relations between photography and architecture, the photographer’s attention mainly concentrate to the light, the shadow and the structure. In architecture the form and structure becomes significant – like in photography – by the light. No surprise then, when the camera itself makes the expression of the built world” – wrote Angelo Maggi about the Italian modern architectural photographer, Frederico Vender (1901-1999). The title of the book ‘Architecture without Architects’ is the same as Bernard Rudofsky’s exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1964. During the preparation for the exhibition Rudofsky decided to exhibit one of the most famous photos of Frederico Vender from 1934, the “Riposo a Camogli” (Rest in Camogli). In this photo Vender managed to capture the unforgettable genius loci, the sense of the site, without allud to the exact location. This image meant for Rudofsky that kind of – geographically and chronologically indeterminate – architecture, in the absence of the adequate term, he called anonymous.