Output details

Cities and Photography

Commissioned as part of the Routledge series Urbanism and the City, the book brings together political uses of art photography and urban theories influenced by Marx (Lefebvre, Harvey, Soja) to discuss the relationship between people and the city. Its specific focus results from an overarching research concern with visual practice and politics, which is explored more expansively through a co-organised 'RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt' project. Research for the book involved extensive visual analyses of contemporary photographic practices in order to feature a selection of international projects from, for example, China, India and Latin America. Using these as case studies, the book provides an alternative perspective on urbanism by examining conditions of space, city and the urban experience articulated visually in photographs.

¶ The significant fact of featuring photographic art practice within the context of urban studies establishes discussion as interdisciplinary and, aiming to shift the division that tends to exist between art and the social, that photography (as art) participates in social debate, rather than merely providing a visual background or representing the photographer’s vision. The book interprets the city as a spatial network that we inhabit on different conceptual, psychological and physical levels, and gives emphasis to how people operate within, relate to, and activate the city via construction, habitation and disruption. The analysis "of" photography, and photography used "as" analysis, positions the photograph as a provocation and a contributor to commentary and argument.