It is perhaps a little known (or cared for) fact that in the furthest mists of Unpopular time I studied two years on an architecture course before eventually switching to complete an Interior Design degree. Naturally this qualified me to do nothing except become a teacher. Or perhaps that was just the result of a complete inability to engage with the real world of commerce. Whatever. I mention this not to suggest that, you know, I coulda been a contender or somethin’, but rather to explain why my favourite periodical of recent years has been The Modernist. It was a picture of Johnny Marr posing with the magazine (he’s a patron) that hipped me to it, and that is just fine. Marr was always my favourite in These Myths and whilst I have tried very hard to enjoy his solo records they have always left me cold despite me willing myself to say ‘wow, this is the business’ or some such. Sorry Mr Marr, they just don’t spark the thrill. But The Modernist? Now you’re talking. A bit like Caught By The River for architecture and design lovers, The Modernist ploughs a very specific furrow and is assuredly beloved by anyone who cares for a spare aesthetic of concrete brutalism/minimalism and the ghosts of 1970s urban planning. I particularly like the tall thin format of recent issues with it’s numerous fold-out pages lending the magazine an appropriate three dimensional quality, and issue 34 (‘juxtaposition’) is certainly a treat to keep me entertained in the lockdown.

Ashiya Eastwood has a terrific spread about the legendary Sound Mirrors Of Denge (new band name. I call it) with some deliciously warm photographs. Katrina Navickas has an informative piece about litter bin design in public spaces (of course!) and Craig Austin writes about the 1970s campaign to position Cwmbran as “the town where the future is happening now” and in doing so expands to contemplate personal history and other elements of British utopian planners dreams gone wrong (but that look brilliant). Best of all though is the terrifically titled ‘Anti Bucolic’ piece which collects some black and white photographs by Jethro Marshall. A segment of curving concrete harbour wall. Concrete steps cast between craggy rocks. A concrete cliff face embedded into the chalk face like industrial dentistry. Magic. Like looking at the kinds of photographs I would make myself, and blow me if that piece of industrial dentistry isn’t at Beer, the home of the famous caves and setting for much of Ian Sansom’s ‘Death In Devon’. In other words, right on my doorstep.

Marshall, it turns out, runs a small press called West Country Modern that has published a small but perfectly formed sequence of slim books that explore aspects of the South West landscape. ‘Coastal Brutalism’ explores exactly what it suggests, and is where you will find those shots of concrete sea walls and steps, alongside anti-tank cubes and pillboxes (and incidentally, mention of pillboxes on the South West coast cannot help but remind one of Alexander Stuart’s ‘The War Zone’) whilst the cheekily titled ‘Farm Follows Function’ presents photographs of industrial farm buildings. Unpopulated by humans or livestock, these photographs present the purity of form of these often ad-hoc collections of buildings as compositions of simple forms, line and texture. They are exactly the kinds of scenes I find most appealing when riding my bicycle along the farm tracks of Devon during my daily exercise excursions.

Marshall’s ‘Nightlife’ on the other hand is a meander away from the constructed landscape into the natural treasures of dusk and the cloak of night. Shots of grasses softly swaying in the wind and macro captures of flower heads frozen in light against rich darkness, they recall for me some of the terrific shots in the ‘Kentucky Renaissance’ collection of Lexington Camera Club photography: Meatyard’s ‘Zen twigs’, or Charles Traub’s ‘Fall’ perhaps. At times too these images remind me of Sarah Jones’ exquisite shots of rose bushes and there is nothing wrong with that. Tania Kovat’s accompanying text is just as marvellous, taking in as it does the sounds and scents of flora and fauna amplified through darkness, the scientific magik of Vantablack and the elliptical wonder of Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit Of Eden’. It all fits.