Deutsch
English
Statement by the photographer, Jeffrey LADD
"Among the vast amounts of beauty that the pictures hold, there is also sense of fragility and often signs of devastating violence that seemed to me to mirror the current climate of my former country." (© Jeffrey LADD)
Background information
"Drawing from the nearly half a million photographs and documents comprising the Historic American Buildings Survey held in the US Library of Congress, this book, 'A Field Measure Survey of American Architecture' by Jeffrey LADD constructs a fictional ‘one-way road trip’ across the United States, weaving north and south across the Mason-Dixon line while tacking west. In this photo volume, 'A Field Measure Survey of American Architecture', Jeffrey LADD uses the HABS archive as a surrogate in order to manifest a portrait of his former country at a moment when its democracy seems imperiled.
Content
Inspired equally by the social documentary work of Walker EVANS and the architectural interventions of Gordon MATTA-CLARK and others, in 'A Field Measure Survey of American Architecture' Jeffrey LADD embraces the muteness of photographs to create an ambiguous space where the sculptural, political, forensic, and fictional coalesce within a landscape of both beauty and fragility. What initially appears to be a single voice is revealed to belong to dozens of makers; what seems a description of the distant past is revealed to be closer to the present than expected. 'A Field Measure Survey of American Architecture' sheds light not only on this remarkable archive but on the proliferate meanings that can be shaped from its images." (© Mack books, 2021)