Pictures exhibit reveals work of neglected feminine architects

“Paparazza Moderna: Lovers & Frenemies” is on show on the Yale School of Architecture gallery till Nov. 29.

Maxine Chen

2:21 am, Sep 17, 2025

Maxine Chen, Contributing Photographer

Architecture’s great love stories — and rivalries — are now on display at the “Paparazza Moderna” exhibit at the Yale School of Architecture. 

The exhibit, which will be on display until Nov. 29, intertwines photography and architecture to highlight the work of neglected feminine architects from the Twenties to the Sixties. Put collectively by Lake Verea, a duo of queer artists Francisca Rivero-Lake Cortina and Carla Verea Hernández, the exhibition pointed towards the intimate and emotional features of structure.

 “The exhibition focuses on buildings that a lot of us who study architecture are very familiar with,” Andrew Benner ARC ’03, the director of exhibitions on the structure faculty, stated. “Seeing it through their eyes and in the way that they show their projects gives us a new look that allows us to think about these things differently, not as static objects, but as things that are still alive.”

In the spring, the 2 artists travelled by 11 international locations in 11 weeks and shot 55 rolls of movie, in accordance with an outline displayed within the gallery. They began in Barcelona and led to Saint-Tropez, taking many detours and sudden surprises all through their journey. If a home was unavailable, they’d strive to determine a method to acquire entry or need to reroute their analysis to a different web site.

Lake Verea’s technique was as daring because it was playful. They photographed the houses paparazzi-style, typically with out giving prior discover, to seize them of their on a regular basis state — typically cluttered or weathered however energetic. 

“It’s a little bit of a joke,” Benner stated. “But it lets them uncover things that a staged photoshoot would miss.”

The outcome was a present that reframes structure as an interconnected net of human relationships and residing, altering areas, relatively than as a self-discipline consisting of formal, inflexible objects. The exhibit invitations viewers to see structure as a multifaceted self-discipline that embodies battle, intimacy and reinvention. 

The collection options the work of 14 feminine architects, together with Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand, Aino Marsio-Aalto and Elissa Aalto. Many of the ladies labored alongside male companions, solely to be overshadowed by them in architectural historical past, in accordance with a displayed description. 

“It is the least they could do!” Kathleen Wimer, a former New Haven resident who now lives in California, was drawn into the gallery whereas passing by the promoting outdoors the constructing, stated. 

The prequel to the exhibition — Paparazza Moderna: Frenemies — ran from 2011 to 2018. Frenemies targeted on single-family homes designed within the United States by iconic Modernist architects. The collection informed the story of architects who began out as associates, serving as inspiration to 1 one other, then falling into dispute and later reconciling. This exhibition originated on the Vitra Design Museum in Germany. 

Benner was intrigued by the preliminary exhibition. The architectural themes within the pictures drew his curiosity, he stated, which led him to succeed in out to Lake Varea with a suggestion to collaborate with the structure faculty on the Paparazza Moderna exhibition. 

In the exhibition, images are hung from the ceiling of the gallery in a format that invitations viewers to weave their method by the fourteen chapters. Viewers will discover themselves enclosed between giant sheets lined with images, every targeted on a distinct coloration scheme and architectural fashion. 

The intimacy of the bodily gallery area displays the uncooked, emotional really feel of the pictures themselves. One would possibly really feel the coziness discovered inside the snow-covered roofs of Charlotte Perriand’s Personal Chalet, or the curiosity invoked by the angular gentle coupled with brilliant blue tiles amidst the huge woods of the Aalto House.   

“Architecture is a deeply personal, embodied practice, something we experience all the time,” Julia Edwards ARC ’26 stated. “But the way it’s done professionally is so disembodied and removed from personal relationships with building and I feel that the personal relationship is on display in the show.”

Benner hopes that guests will admire the tales behind the buildings proven within the exhibit. 

“Paparraza Moderna: Lovers & Frenemies” will likely be on show till Nov. 29.