Review of Lake Verea: “Paparazza Moderna: Lovers & Frenemies”
Lake Verea, the artistic and romantic duo comprising Francisca Rivero-Lake and Carla Verea, maintains a guerilla photographic practice: fascinated by the complex relationships behind canonical modern houses, they photograph these reticent buildings without notifying current owners. Playing the part of the paparazza (the rare feminine conjugation of everyone’s love-to-hate-em media pests), they approach with a sort of impish glee. The photographs they produce are results of risk and spontaneity that offer a counter-argument against the glossy, straightened images favoured by architectural tastemakers.
While the outcomes are visually muted, Lake Verea’s image-making process speaks loudly. Their cameras oscillate between distant exterior shots and intimate interior close-ups, subverting the single-family house as the locus for the (re)production of heteronormative ideals. But it is through speech and performance that the genuine stakes of Lake Verea’s exploration are expressed. In Rudolph’s austere temple to modernity, clad in twinning all-black incognito paparazza outfits, they delivered their voyeuristic take on loving and losing in sexy rectilinear rooms. The duo’s quasi-comedic performativity was precisely the tonal upset necessary to reveal the human scale and stories behind the canons. However, upstairs in the gallery, I found it unfulfilling to consume their work without their live narration. The anecdotes of love and hate are betrayed by the absence of human figures in the photographs themselves.
While their exhibition probes at friendships, rivalries, and feuds between architects and clients, their accompanying lecture-performance focused on love affairs and romance. Reminding us that modernism was not produced independently of fragile human conditions, Lake Verea invites us to look behind the curtain and bear witness to the messy, funny, tragic people that make life and love in buildings, for buildings.
Paparazza Moderna: Lovers & Frenemies is on view at Yale School of Architecture Gallery through November 29.
(editors: Alfonse Chiu, Yanbo Li)