A visual meditation on ruins and warfare from the legendary French theorist.
In the second half of the 1950s, Paul Virilio began photographing abandoned World War II bunkers along France's Atlantic coast. Virilio was particularly interested in the architectural aspects of these wartime structures, which he termed "cryptic architecture."
The first exhibition of Virilio's Bunker Archaeology photographs was staged at the Centre Pompidou in 1975, while the museum was still in the process of being established. The book was published in conjunction with this and has been regarded as a classic ever since. It laid out all the motifs of his philosophical thinking: military space and communications warfare, camouflage and acceleration, a scrupulous reading of the present moment coupled with a desire for philosophical speculation.
50 years since the book was first published, and more than 25 years since its last reissuing, Bunker Archaeology remains a relevant and remarkable book for today.
Paul Virilio (1932-2018) was a French cultural theorist and philosopher. His writings, including Speed and Politics (1977), War and Cinema (1989) and The Aesthetics of Disappearance (1991), combined the aesthetic theories of technology, art, architecture, urban planning and the military.