Justice by AM. The architecture behind one of the greatest band’s photos
In September 2022, the photographer Kevin Westenberg captured the unbearable lightness of Arctic Monkeys right next to the geometric majesty of the Palace of Justice in Lisbon. Nowadays, the superb photo serves as the entrance to the full story behind the creation of the band’s new album, The Car, in the legendary MOJO magazine.
Title photo by Kevin Westenberg
It’s just one photo, but it has an exciting story & style at its core. And it feels like a proper still from a movie, a behind-the-scenes of an untitled film from one of the New Waves of the golden sixties. First, it shows that one of the finest Sheffield quartets is back on Earth. The sun is shining, and sunglasses and elegance are in full force. The band, in a strong position, are posing for one perfect shot in front of the monumental concrete beast — the Civil Courts Building of Lisbon Palace of Justice (or, in the original, Tribunais Cíveis de Palacio de Justicia de Lisboa) which was constructed during 1962–1970 by the architectural tandem Januário Gadinho & João Andresen as a central part of a plan for a larger Lisbon Justice Forum that was never completed. Its location is one of the highest points in the city, at the same elevation as the historic symbol of the capital, Saint George’s Castle (Castelo de São Jorge, if you will).
When you’re coming to it, you feel the building‘s pure brutalist energy. And as you’re getting closer, the raw power remains but in a different, much more sensitive way. You realize that the palace is, in a way, something between an abandoned ancient box-like spaceship and a subtle but still substantial ceramic piece of art.
Notice the sophisticated four-part structure of the building. The long concrete block (with the offices and archives inside) is standing on the pairs of massive pillars, then leads into the artful tower which infuses right into the beautifully crafted “shredder” with the small windows playing an expressionist game with blue-green colors. Then, the whole sculptural body is finished with the massive grey box which could remind you of a kind of battery giving life-power to the final act of justice. (Just for your information, there is a strictly guarded jail opposite the palace, just across the parking site).
This excellent combination of modernist architectural language and the Monkeys’ elegance makes Kevin Westenberg’s photo so powerful in the band’s iconic portfolio. You can also observe a soft clash between the present and the past, specifically between the front and the back in the image. At first sight, the Arctic Monkeys are getting out of The Car in their new (extra)ordinary style, almost like five “flâneurs” from the French New Wave cinema. In contrast, the backdrop of the image, with its architecture & design, rather resembles the retro-futuristic Tranquility Base Hotel+Casino, a vintage complex on the surface of the Moon.
It is a one-point perspective, but Westenberg’s photo will stand here for the future, frozen in time as a stylish still from an unknown film. It is up to you and your aesthetical taste what genre it will be. Pure science-fiction or neorealism? At the end of the day, it could be anything.
If you’re looking for some more to admire, feel free to see all the details about the (back then) new materials used during the making of the façade or explore the interior world of the palace — from the harmony between used materials, schemes, original furnishings to the ceramic designs by one of the Portuguese most essential potters, Mr. Querubim Lapa (1925–2016).
