Brasília: the modernist utopia is a photographic essay by Adonai Rocha that I gave to Mark in 2014. Mark takes an avid interest in architecture and the capital city of Brazil is one place he would like to visit. And as it turns out, in a month from now we will be there. Brasília will be the final stop on our monthlong trip to South America, where we will take a cruise for two weeks and visit various cities for another two weeks. Obviously since Brasília is an inland city our cruise ship will not be travelling there.
This was a self-published book of 114 pages with minimal text. Often the same captions were used under different photos depicting the same thing. Rocha took a particular interest in the downtown bus station, featuring more photos from that central transit hub than of other more striking and attractive buildings.
Rocha used a GigaPan to capture extremely wide shots. As Brasília is a city constructed from scratch in the Brazilian interior, panoramic shots showed how vast the layout is. It makes me worry how walkable the place is since the shots made every building seem excessively far away from one another. Mark and I are walkers yet I wonder how we will get around the city centre. Good thing we are there for four whole days.
The cover depicts the National Museum, which appears to have two entrances. The cover shows a long ramp leading inside, while underneath the ramp on the lower left you can see only part of a ramp that almost encircles the entire building. Since the museum is situated next to a reflecting pool, the hemisphere shape looks like the planet Saturn, complete with rings, when viewed from across the water.
I look forward to seeing the Cathedral of Brasília and the Monumental Axis, two collosal rows of seventeen identical office buildings that look like dominoes stacked on their long sides. The concrete in so many of the structures is to my eyes unappealing, but Brasília was built in the late fifties and opened to the world in 1960, when naked concrete as a construction medium was in fashion.
The photos that captured the widest horizons were far too thin and narrow to appreciate the landscapes. These kinds of photos are best suited for bigger books that like to lie on coffee tables.