Before and After: Documenting the Architecture of Disaster

A short illustrated essay on the before-and-after image as a way of documenting destruction, from its origins to satellite surveillance.

Satellite photography shows the effects of war or climate change from the distance of orbit, but rarely the event itself. Eyal and Ines Weizman argue that an architectural expert is needed to fill that gap with a narrative. They trace the before-and-after image from nineteenth-century Paris to current satellite imagery, in which state militaries monitor civilians and humanitarian organisations monitor the militaries. Interpreting these images is never straightforward, and the essay asks who can see in higher resolution and who controls the size of the pixels. The book runs 70 pages and was published by Strelka Press in 2014.

Eyal Weizman, an architect born in Haifa in 1970, founded the agency Forensic Architecture in 2010 and directs it at Goldsmiths, University of London. His books include Hollow Land (2007) and Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability (2017).