The City of Namara by Robert G. Achtel presents an American city that exists somewhere between reality and fiction through nine original composites meticulously created from the artist’s photographs and designs. The citizens are nowhere to be seen, yet it’s the implied human drama presented in each piece that pulls the viewer into a thrilling narrative of excess and despair. On the surface, the series alludes to a period of architectural upheaval when the standards of Modernism were questioned, if not rejected, by a new school of designers. At the end of the 1960s, the truth had become all but relative and this new age was embedded in the architecture through irony, seduction, and profitability.
