Markus Brunetti:FACADES IV
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Markus Brunetti (b. 1965, Germany) continues his singular mission to document Europe’s historic cathedrals, churches, monasteries, and synagogues in immaculate detail. With his partner, Betty Schoener, Brunetti travels the continent in a converted firetruck-turned-photo-lab. Together, the two live and work on the road, returning to their subjects repeatedly over a period of several years and taking thousands of photographs of each structure. Brunetti then edits, layers, and arranges each frame to create a composite image that eschews the illusory effects of spatial perspective and provides an otherwise impossible, perfect view of the building’s façade.
Brunetti’s practice is often likened to Bernd and Hilla Becher’s serial documentation of German industrialization, yet the artist himself aligns his methods more closely with the tradition of Old Master painting. Like the masters of the Renaissance, the artist offers interpretations of his monumental subjects, not simply by photographing them, but by crafting a view of each structure according to his conceptual understanding of its architecture. Brunetti’s images thus offer their own Bildsprache or visual language, that translates the presence of each building in three dimensional space into an idealized, two dimensional image that showcases the finest details of every square-meter of the façade. In this way, the artist preserves the cultural heritage these structures embody, immortalizing them in his impeccable renderings.