ABSTRACT
This paper discusses a number of ways in which the camera is currently being used to document and dramatize the construction of buildings. Various strategies, including long exposures, time-lapse sequences, and multiple viewpoints, are used in order to render visible the complex, continuous activity of building. As well as a number of photographic projects, the paper also examines how lens-based technologies are being used, in conjunction with building information modeling, to chart and control processes of construction. Brecht’s notion of epic theatre is offered as a possible means of understanding and critiquing these processes.
