My article entitled: Cultural Geography / Urban Photography: Spaces, Objects Events is now in press with Geography Compass.
An earlier version of the paper is available here. And here is the abstract:
An earlier version of the paper is available here. And here is the abstract:
Image-making
is bound up in our experience of urban space.
In artistic and academic practice, contemporary urban photography has
critically reworked street photography traditions, embracing its energy and
spontaneity, while inviting a more dialogic and reflexive approach. Although the use of urban photography has
been somewhat limited in cultural geography research, the practice has enormous
potential to complement and enhance contemporary enquiries in the field – particularly those that highlight feelings,
experience, and textures of place, and draw from more-than-representational
approaches. A return to making
urban photos also chimes with current approaches that incorporate creative
practice and performative methodologies to introduce uncertainty into research. Here I consider
what cultural geographers might gain by exploring city spaces, objects, and
events through the lens. I focus not on
the images themselves, but on the practice of doing urban photography and on what these images may do for research. In particular, photography may help evoke the
feeling of place and its material richness.
By focusing on urban micro-geographies, and by opening work to ambiguity
and chance, geographers may create new space for interpretation. Attending to material with the camera also
enables us to play with value and hierarchy, and provoke the animation and
agency of matter. Finally, as well as
highlighting the matter of things, images can capture the matter of our own
bodies caught up in events with the cities we inhabit. Urban photography offers a way of doing research that opens up city
spaces, objects, and events, so we can better reflect on the complex textures,
feelings, and experiences of urban space.
