At first glance, Throughout the Universe in Perpetuity – a phrase used in legal parlance to denote unending ownership – is a book on a certain type of architecture often denoted as ‘international style’. But going through the images of buildings in pale pastels dotted with single spots of assertive colour, it becomes obvious that something else entirely is going on. Dwelling on each photo, they transform themselves into abstract contemplations on form – sometimes evoking a Suprematist feeling – and then suddenly a single colour changes the image fundamentally as soon as you spot it. One wonders whether architecture, form, or colour is the books’ main protagonist until the suspicion arises that it is perhaps something else entirely; something akin to abandonment. The photos build up the experience of an architecture and environment where man no longer has any place; which, ironically, is only further underlined in the few images where human actors appear. There is something very hard, cold, and distant about these images in all their pristine presence that they become almost terrifying to look at – until the book ends with 8 pages of red and 1 of yellow that in their colourful formlessness work like sudden sunshine.

Published by Études Books, 2015

144 pages

Hardcover