Although it is almost fifty years since Bunker Archeology first appeared, it remains packed with connections to the present. The author, Paul Virilio (1932–2018), was French philosopher, urbanist and critic of the media society. To coincide with an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, this new edition of the book is published in French, English and German.
Paul Virilio’s reputation today derives from the work he did for Bunker Archeology. When, in the second half of the 1950s, he began photographing abandoned Second World War bunkers along France’s Atlantic coast, he was working with glass as an artistic medium. In 1966, he presented his photographs to the public for the first time in the magazine architecture principe, which he co-edited. At the time, he was particularly interested in the architectural aspects of these wartime installations. He saw the bunkers as 'harbingers of a new architecture', which he sought to capture in the term 'cryptic architecture'.
The first exhibition of Virilio’s Bunker Archeology was staged at the Centre Pompidou in 1975, while the museum was still in the process of being established. His seminal book was published in conjunction with this. It laid out all the motifs of his philosophical thinking: military space and communications warfare, camouflage and acceleration, a scrupulous reading of the present coupled with a desire for philosophical speculation.
Spector Books, 212pp, 22cm x 26cm, illustrated hardcover, first edition 2025
