Haydn Araki

Gonzo photojournalist

[DaVinci @BiancoDavinci]

Stairway handle design by Gio Ponti in Italy from the 1900s.

[Haydn Araki @Koko23]

Architecture is important.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

Walk through any European city built before 1900, then look at anything from after 1960, and ask yourself why we stopped building places people travel thousands of miles to see...

There is a reason some structures fill you with awe and others depress you. It is not a matter of taste. It is something more fundamental, something that operates on us whether we notice it or not.

And most people, it turns out, feel the same way about it. According to a Harris Poll conducted for the National Civic Art Society, more than seven in ten Americans — 72 percent — prefer traditional architecture for federal buildings over modernist alternatives.

Not many can articulate why. People just know that certain structures make them feel small in the best possible way, and others make them feel like they do not matter at all.

There are many reasons why things have turned out this way... one of the most compelling is probably rooted in how our ancestors approached building itself. They often worked with the assumption that what they created carried meaning and purpose that would extend beyond their own lifetimes.

Now we live in a society organized around the opposite principle — planned obsolescence, the deliberate engineering of things to fail and be replaced, because durability is the enemy of profit. We have applied this logic not just to our phones and our furniture but to our buildings and our cities. And we are living with the results.

We used to build train stations that looked like cathedrals. Now we have churches that look like conference centers...

As Roger Scruton once said: "Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter."

I started this newsletter because the people who came before us left us something extraordinary, and almost no one is teaching us how to see it anymore. Every week I try to.

If that is something you would like to be part of, you can join here:

https://t.co/bnGG4VWs2m

I write about beauty in all its forms. If you'd like to support the work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.

[Haydn Araki @Koko23]

Crazy horror film set on the South Downs! http://t.co/KZSC3dWepZ

[Haydn Araki @Koko23]

Reading Harper's Bazaar and a book Bob Richardson photos in tandem. Would Bob's photos cut it today?

[Haydn Araki @Koko23]

Animals can wait.

[Haydn Araki @Koko23]

Save people first.

[Haydn Araki @Koko23]

Not vegetarian though.

[Haydn Araki @Koko23]

Hamburgers.

[Haydn Araki @Koko23]

And eating.

[Haydn Araki @Koko23]

Well breathing.

[Haydn Araki @Koko23]

Nothing.

[Haydn Araki @Koko23]

Feeling responsible

[Haydn Araki @Koko23]

Dreaming

[Haydn Araki @Koko23]

Drinking Pinot