By the time the photographer Ian Berry persuaded the Russian officer at the Czech border in 1968 that he was on the way to an architects’ conference, he had already been commissioned to contribute to Manplan, a groundbreaking series of photo essays in the Architectural Review in 1969-70.
Conceived by the journal’s visionary and somewhat eccentric editor/proprietor Hubert de Cronin Hastings, the eight editions, each with a specially commissioned photographer and editor, were not the publishing success that he had hoped for. Nonetheless, the series has since been described as “the bravest moment in architectural publishing”.
Berry’s contribution came in the second edition, called Society and Its Contacts, otherwise transport and communications, aiming to show what society needs, rather than what will pay best.
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