Judith Turner on Peter Marino
The US photographer Judith Turner recently presented a copy of the limited edition book ‘Judith Turner on Peter Marino’, 2017, to the AA Library. It comprises photographs of Peter Marino’s Boontheshop building in Seoul, South Korea, which have been put together to form grainy and abstract photocollages. The book is beautifully produced and has a silver binding and transparent screenprinted dustjacket. In the acknowledgements, Judith describes the book as ‘my most elegant, beautiful and flawlessly designed book’.
Peter Marino commissioned Turner to photograph the building, a women’s fashion store spread over seven floors, in 2015. Turner describes her approach in the Introduction: ‘I do not document or record buildings in a conventional manner, instead I use them as subject matter. I isolate a building from its context trying to uncover some of the architecture’s inherent complexities. On one level, I aspire to be true to the architecture, but in my photographs of buildings, I compose small abstract fragments that reveals another level of reality. The resulting images enable me to invent my own dream worlds of architecture in both individual photos and photo-collages’ …
The building is made of two angular white marble pavilions connected by a glass enclosed bridge. It uses stamped mirror-polished stainless steel panels which present various tones at different times of the day, which is captured in some of the photocollages. The building also contains an angled black steel staircase which Turner feels gives the impression of moving through a ‘cubist environment’.
Spread from Judith Turner on Peter Marino, photo collages by Judith Turner, architecture by Peter Marino, book design by Lorenzo Ottaviani/Peter Marino Architect, published by Peter Marino Architect, PLLC, 2017 © Judith Turner 2017
