The Bank of England in Ruins: Photography, Money and the Law of Equivalence

This collaborative book chapter juxtaposes academic writing critiquing the abstract nature of money and credit with photographs derived from Wiblin's series 'BANK' (as included in the exhibition 'BANK', Schwarzwaldallee Gallery, Basel (2015). Wiblin's images allude, through their close-up depiction of eroded fossil stone, to the material impermanence of the Bank of England. This conceptual, rather than purely illustrative, visual intervention into Müller's constructed chapter text challenges perceptions of academic writing. Presented in this context, the photographs (reproduced in black and white), their largely abstract content interrupting the flow of discourse, provide a screen through which further trajectories of thought on the essential insecurity of money can be filtered. The elements of this research are combined with the aim of illuminating the otherwise abstract nature of money and finance that the physical structure of the Bank of England represents. A painting by J.M. Gandy (1830), depicting Sir John Soane's early nineteenth century architecture in ruins, provided a visual and conceptual catalyst for research practiced and applied through photography and video – and through the collaborative process of devising the text of this book chapter.