‘Opposite Places, Common Traces’ at the Barbican

Naked Structures, City Road 2018

Chilean architect and photographer Francisco Ibáñe Hantke takes us on his photographic journeys, some lasting several years. He’s mapping a city’s imperfect beauty, capturing its buildings’ life cycle. His series Non-Structures featured London as ‘a spectacle of constant conflict, negotiation, and flux’. And now, in his newest exhibition opening on 1st June in the Barbican Library, he invites us to ‘reimagine the transformation of two global cities: London and Santiago.’ He has an intimate knowledge of both capital cities, having lived between the two for some time.

Palimpsest Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, 2019

‘I undertake prolonged photographic investigations. Usually, over months or years, I revisit several times the areas that I have photographed, aiming to achieve a series of images that critically reflect on the challenges and conflicts faced by urban transformations’.

Using 36 images, some new and some from his archive, he constantly contrasts and merges, bringing the cities together and reminding us of the links between architecture, infrastructure, art, and design.

‘the show explores the visual and symbolic language of various ephemeral urban elements, from building and demolition sites to mutated, propped up, and obsolete structures’

Unsustainable Structures, Wentworth Street, London 2017

About Francisco Ibáñez Hantke:

Francisco Ibáñez is an architect, urban planner, and photographer based in Santiago and London. He specialises in urban regeneration and divides his time between managing urban regeneration projects as part of multidisciplinary teams and working on audiovisual research projects on cities and architecture transformation.