London-based photographer Christopher Hope-Fitch offers a new perspective on brutalist architecture. The artist takes the typically grey buildings and illuminates them in technicolour. The ongoing Brutalism in Colour series began in 2017, when he attended an event to mark the demolition of Wellbeck Street car park. He knew that there would be countless images taken and posted of the evening and wanted to find a way to make his own stand out. “One of the techniques I’d learned at the lab was sometimes to push the image too far in order to understand it better, in that same spirit I pushed the saturation level to 100% and loved the result. Welbeck was the perfect building to try this technique, as it had such a wide range of lighting striking it, which, when coupled with its many faceted facade, brought out its structure.”
There is a process of trial and error that comes with shooting buildings cities that are always evolving, often meaning a quick pivot from the original plan. Hope-Finch picks a location, sometimes in advance and sometimes as he happens to be walking by, before setting up a test shot on his iPhone. Once the angle and composition are right, the images are taken before being edited to bring out the colour. This means that the end result can often be a mystery even to the creator. “I’m rarely completely sure how the final image will turn out, there are too many variables and I’m pushing the colour so far that the least significant thing, such as a car’s tail lights as it passes by, can make a high difference to the final image. But this is why I’m still enjoying this project and having such fun seeing what treasures I can find.”
Words: Emma Jacob
All images courtesy of the artist.
