The fiftieth anniversary celebrations for the capital city of
Brasilia in 2010 were an occasion for many to comment on its
operational and design deficiencies, as well as those of the
Brazilian government itself. In an earlier piece about the
anniversary we noted how demographic shifts have challenged the
city’s original master plan. These sorts of discussions, while
necessary, tend to obscure the city’s ambitious, Utopian
origins. Brasilia’s designers, urban planner Lucio Costa and
architect Oscar Niemeyer, had shaped it to embody the most
progressive political, social, and aesthetic concepts. A new
book of photographs by Marcel Gautherot, “Building Brasilia,”
that documents the city’s construction and early years, evokes
these ideals with great power. Gautherot was a Paris-born
photographer who trained as an architect and worked as an
ethnographic photographer in the 1930’s, traveling within Mexico
and Brazil to document traditional cultures. After serving in
the French army in Senegal during World War II,