Beautiful Brutalism | Jo Underhill

Beautiful Brutalism is an ongoing project which started in 2011. I have always been a fan of brutalist architecture and concrete as a material, so I decided to explore this by photographing the National Theatre in London. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to photograph more of these amazing post-war buildings so in between commissioned work I have been exploring and photographing buildings across the UK. Unfortunately, brutalist architecture has not been universally liked or supported. Not all of these buildings were built with the same original design vision and over the years many have been neglected and fallen into disrepair. As a result, public opinion has often been negative and disparaging. In many peoples’ minds concrete has become synonymous with ugliness. In recent years dozens of brutalist buildings have been demolished - Birmingham Central Library, Tricorn Centre, Welbeck Street Car Park to name but a few – with many more currently under threat.

The project has evolved from the early beginnings of simply wanting to photograph concrete and brutalism, to a life–long undertaking to document and highlight the beauty of brutalist architecture in the UK. This project celebrates those buildings that have already been lost and I hope, in some small way, challenges the prevailing view about brutalism by showing how beautiful these buildings are if you take the time to really look at them.

In early 2022 I self-published a limited-edition book bringing together photographs from the first ten years of this project which was designed by Stanley James Press. The book is now sold out but since the beginning of the year I have been collaborating with musician and composer Carl Woodcroft on a soundtrack to accompany the photographs in the book. Carl was inspired by the book and has created a mood and soundscape for each building. It is a mix of sound and vision; the album includes a digital booklet of the photographs featured in the book and notes from Carl talking about inspiration for each track and it is available to preorder now and to buy from Friday November 3rd.

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album - highly recommend listening to, and pre-ordering, the accompanying album by Carl Woodcroft… it’s fantastic!

All images & text © Jo Underhill