:QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:Mara Voss]
Everyone shoots these buildings on bright days and calls them brutal. I waited for the rain. Wet concrete remembers every storm it has ever taken.


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Brutalism After the Rain
For three winters I photographed the same concrete buildings only when it rained. Dry, beton brut reads as a threat. Wet, it turns the colour of a storm cloud, and the board marks left by the timber formwork fill with water and shine like grain in old wood. This is a short essay in favour of the most hated architecture of the twentieth century, photographed on the days it looks most alive.


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The stairwell
Geometry that looks brutal in sunlight softens into something closer to a riverbed once it is wet.


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The facade
Identical balconies feel oppressive in a brochure and entirely human once you notice the laundry and the rain stains.


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:PROFILE [image:https://slatesource-media.s3.amazonaws.com/1/8/2/1826871a-cbb7-4d72-ab84-a8dcce19924c.webp?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20260701T214443Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Credential=AKIA6PWPI77XKVCG2MNW%2F20260701%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Expires=21600&X-Amz-Signature=4747bc4e8a99131f558af33e4dd07ad1e8b587bbf960ac75a633e44b6e16f1c3]
Mara Voss
Sheffield, England
Shoots postwar concrete only in rain and fog.
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Find me online
https://instagram.com/maravoss.concrete
https://maravoss.studio

:QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:Mara Voss]
A building you only love on sunny days is a building you never really loved. Go back when the weather is bad. That is when it tells the truth.