There will be very little record of our current civilisation. The architecture we're building is fragile.
John Gollings, best known for photographing the world's newest buildings, actually prefers the older ones. A new exhibition of 10 images by the veteran snapper, Ancient Cities of the Asia Pacific, is a long way from the just-delivered glass and steel structures Gollings routinely shoots for the architectural firm midwives that have brought them into the world.
Of course, the two different subject matters are intimately linked. The sites in western China, India and Cambodia Gollings has been returning to for more than three decades honed the skills that have made him an in-demand commercial photographer.
"I practised on the ancient architecture because the buildings are harder to photograph than the new ones. They don't light up and don't do a dusk shot. Generally they're all monochromatic grey blending into the sky."
He also developed his composition style of shooting a building in its context – showing what it stood next to, rather than cropping neighbouring structures out.
"The viewer has a right to interpret the suitability of a building [among] its neighbours. In learning to do those contextual shots in all all these ancient cities you have to work hard. It becomes a city photo rather than a building photo."
But it goes even deeper than that. The photos, on show at the State Library of Queensland from March 18 as part of Brisbane's Asia Pacific Architecture Forum, reveal the decay of previous tyrants' hubris in all their crumbling irony and the tragic loss of design skills and technologies that are unknown today.
From watchtowers guarding the imperial harems of the later-sacked Hindu Viyanagara Empire in southern India, to the funerary temple built with 200 images of Khmer king Jayavarman VII's face, to the Vittala Hindu temple with columns carved out of single blocks of granite that chime musical notes, they show no civilisation or demagogue should ever be so complacent as to think the current state of affairs will last forever.
Relevant warning
Gollings, himself an architect by education, says it's a relevant warning in an age of selfies, Instagram influencers and Twitter wars.
"Like the Hollywood films of the 1950s on film stock that faded, all the digital ephemera will disappear or be hard to access again. There will be very little record of our current civilisation. The architecture we're building is fragile, made of glass and materials that will disappear within 25 years."
The exhibition also shows architecture in places many may not expect to see it. The oldest human construction revealed is Nawarla Gabarnmang, a sandstone shelter about 50,000 years old in western Arnhem Land that Gollings photographed in 2015.
A giant quartzite slab, formed some 1.7 billion years ago out of former sea bed was supported by hardened columns.
Aboriginal people of the time removed about half of the columns by hand, to create large spaces under the shelter while still supporting the Olympic swimming pool-sized slab. They painted the ceiling and columns with images that may prove to predate the earliest known human artworks, the prehistoric Chauvet Cave in southern France.
"It's quite extensive," Gollings says. "They excavated columns and got flat ceilings. They appear to have carved lintels as well. They have an understanding of structure, all of which has got lost."
The exhibition was originally titled "Dead Cities" but was changed out of respect for indigenous sensitivities around use of the word.
'Jaw-dropping' feeling
"This was a meeting point for a lot of different tribes and clans," he says. "It has that awe-inspiring feeling that is jaw-dropping. You have to go into a cathedral to get a similar feeling. I was concerned to show the architecture of the site – the paintings become like the Sistine Chapel ceiling."
Sites such as the Zenana Enclosure of Viyanagara Empire, which sought to ward off – unsuccessfully – Islamic invasions and those of the 600-year Khmer Empire that devised elaborate hydraulic and irrigation systems were underpinned by a mathematical rigour to their structure.
"They have a triangulated hierarchy," Gollings says. "The highest bit is in the middle and it drops off. There's an empirical logic that makes them very satisfying to look at and walk around."
Modern-day, technologically-driven architecture is fundamentally changing the rules of the game from its ancient past, Gollings says. "Now architecture talks about a totally free-form curvilinear, computer-generated form-making," he says. "The very basis for architectural design has now fundamentally changed, probably for the first time in history, into something else. There was an embedded logic in [ancient buildings] that made it much easier to look where the shots are. But in modern architecture, it's all over the place and so am I!"
So what sort of legacy will today's buildings leave? Gollings isn't a fan of modern cities, which he calls expensive and unhealthy.
"It's architecture of the lowest common denominator. Our cities are dead ugly. They're cheap as chips and they're all falling down."
The man who makes a living shooting new buildings rates them by their ability to grow old well and on that score, Australia doesn't do well. Nowhere does well.
"Sydney Opera House is a major building in the public domain that would work well as a ruin," he says. "But not many other buildings would work well as ruins, which is my criteria for assessing them. Maybe [Hobart's] Mona, basically buried underground. That will always remain. Even if you turn the lights off, you'll be able to explore it like a cave.
"Maybe Ronchamp, a Catholic church in south France by Le Corbusier. That's a beautiful little job, well made out of concrete. But there's not much else."
The exhibition is part of the Asia Pacific Architecture Forum in Brisbane. Ancient Architecture of the Asia Pacific, March 18 to April 16, 2017. APDL Design Lounge, Level 2, State Library of Queensland, Stanley Place, Brisbane
