A façade like a musical score: row upon row of identical concrete windows, brightening towards the top and sinking into darkness below, with a handful of pigeons on the sloping roof edge as the only sign of life. The building is the Bijenkorf car park on Beursplein in Amsterdam, built in 1977–1981 to a design by Frans van Gool, the architect who as a young man helped shape Rotterdam’s Lijnbaan and later became Chief Government Architect of the Netherlands. Its façades of prefabricated concrete elements make it one of the few Brutalist buildings in the heart of the old city. The garage was controversial from the start – less for its architecture than for the idea of a public car park behind the Dam: for years the queue at its entrance, the notorious “Bijenkorf traffic jam”, stretched across the square. In the series Silent Giants Jan C. Schlegel approaches such a building the way he makes his portraits – with soft light, patience and hours of looking, until the structure gives up its character.

Schlegel (b. 1965) works with a large-format camera on film and makes all his prints by hand in the darkroom. This work is a handmade platinum print on Arches Platine Rag, one of the most permanent photographic processes, with exceptional tonal richness and material depth. His work has been presented at Paris Photo, Photo London, Art Basel and Art Cologne, among others.