An ironic take on the Case Study House Program--initiated in 1945 by Arts and Architecture magazine in an effort to develop low-priced single-family homes by architects such as Richard Neutra and Charles and Ray Eames--German photographer Peter Bialobrzeski's Case Study Homes was shot at the Baseco compound, a squatter camp near the Port of Manila, which is home to an estimated 70,000 people. As Bialobrzeski was considering the series--startling images of provisional structures fashioned from slats, cardboard, corrugated metal and other cast-off materials and refuse--Lehman Brothers Bank collapsed and the media declared a global economic crisis. These recent events lend resonance to Bialobrzeski's images, which recall the photographs of impoverished rural Americans commissioned by the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s. Conceived as a sketchbook for a larger project, the images evidence the human will to survive and a profound resourcefulness.

Photography of domestic interiors in Kliptown, the poorest quarter of the old township of Soweto.

Text by Michael Glasmeier.

Photographer Peter Bialobrzeski here merges the seven Asian cities of Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Jakarta, Singapor, and Shenzhen into a virtual megatropolis. The result is a view of a world that no longer seems real but appears instead as a series of dream-images from an eccentric director or computer game designer. References to reality evoke a sense of conflict in the viewer, as appreciation for the beauty of the absurd competes with recognition of an irreversible process of change in urban living space. Two different growth models are exposed: unscrupulous, uncontrolled expansion, as in Bangkok, and controlled, yet equally unscrupulous growth in a city like Shanghai. The pictures burst with conflicting signs and symbols, mostly indecipherable to the western viewer, a semiotic overkill held in check only by the picture frame.

During his travels through China, Peter Bialobrzeski was fascinated by the so-called nail houses. Surrounded by tall, newly constructed buildings, these houses have been earmarked for demolition, but their owners resolutely refuse to vacate. In his thought-provoking series the artist photographs these isolated structures, often in the evening hours, when the brightly lit interiors convey the domestic comfort that these homes provide for their owners, despite all the cracks in the walls. Peter Bialobrzeski (* 1961 in Wolfsburg) uses his camera to offer these renitent structures moral support. Following the publication of Case Study Homes and Informal Arrangements, this striking series completing the Habitat trilogy poses uncomfortable questions to the viewer. It also emphatically underscores the fundamental right of every human being to a home and sense of security.

Collects street photographs from noted photographers of cities around the world, from New York and Sao Paolo to Paris and Sydney.

The US mortgage crisis exposed weaknesses in the regulation of the financial industry and the global financial system. At the end of 2008, as the fall-out from the crisis became increasingly widely felt, Edgar Martins was commissioned by New York Times Magazine to photograph its impact across the US in eight separate states and across 16 different locations. These carefully researched sites exposed the extent and impact of the credit crunch on the construction industry.