Picturing Cities

A cura di: Davide Deriu, Angelo Maggi

Picturing Cities

The Photobook as Urban Narrative

This collection of essays from Europe and the Americas illustrates a broad range of aesthetic attitudes as well as analytical approaches to Western cities expressed through photobooks. The anthology focuses on the photobook as a form of urban narrative: a tool that has been deployed to read, analyse and interpret cities through curated sequences of images. It opens up a multidisciplinary field of research with the potential to expand into further geographical and cultural areas.

Pages: 216

ISBN: 9788835157724

Edizione:1a edizione 2024

Publisher code: 10081.1

Info about Open Access books

What is a photobook? And how can we assess its historical and cultural relevance for the representation of cities? The terms 'photographic book' and 'picture book' refer to various illustrated publications, with or without text, in which photographic images play a key role. Often resulting from the collaboration between photographers, editors and graphic designers, they are intended to build visual narratives on specific places or subjects. Throughout its history, this versatile form of publication has allowed photographers to depict urban environments in widely different ways. Although the photobook has been integral to the construction of urban narratives since the early-twentieth century, its significance for the experience and perception of cities has so far been rarely investigated. Picturing Cities addresses this gap by mapping the shifting nature and function of photobooks onto the history of urban representation. This collection of essays from Europe and the Americas illustrates a broad range of aesthetic attitudes as well as analytical approaches to Western cities expressed through photobooks. The anthology, stemming from a conference session chaired by the editors, focuses on the photobook as a form of urban narrative: a tool that has been deployed to read, analyse and interpret cities through curated sequences of images, often in conjunction with literary or critical texts. It opens up a multidisciplinary field of research with the potential to expand into further geographical and cultural areas.

Davide Deriu is a Reader in Architectural History and Theory at the University of Westminster, London. His monograph, On Balance: Architecture and Vertigo (2023), was published by Lund Humphries.

Angelo Maggi is Associate Professor of Architectural History at Università Iuav di Venezia. His award-winning book, G.E. Kidder Smith Builds: The Travel of Architectural Photography (2022), was published by ORO Editions.

Davide Deriu, Angelo Maggi, Introduction
Framing Modernities
Birgit Schillak-Hammers, Visualising modern Berlin: The city image in photobooks of the 1920s
Ellen Handy,
Picturing New York in photobooks, 1930-1940: Berenice Abbott and change
Catalina Fara,
In search of the modernist city: Grete Stern's urban gaze in two photobooks about Buenos Aires
Urban Imaginaries
Roger J. Crum, Picturing unified Italy through a photobook unbound: The Stazione S. Maria Novella in Florence
Letizia Goretti, Photography and psychogeography: The Leaning Tower of Venice
Andrew Higgott,
The dream city: London photobooks from Bill Brandt to Rut Blees Luxemburg
Visual Journeys
Barbara Boifava, Lawrence Halprin: For a taxonomy of cities
Lilyana Karadjova,
Streetscapes in the photographic distance: Abstract and lived spaces in Ed Ruscha's Then & Now
Angelo Maggi,
Venice's time warp: The visual metamorphosis of a floating city
Maria Pia Fontana, Miguel Mayorga,
Cities and architecture in Latin America: The immersive cartography of Leonardo Finotti's photobooks
Politics of Representation
Alexandra Tommasini, Archiving the Italian city: Three photobooks by Gabriele Basilico
Davide Deriu, Reclaiming the vertical city: Play and politics in London Rising
Wes Aelbrecht,
'Detroit. Move here. Move the world': Constructing Detroit in photobooks
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
List of photobooks
Select bibliography
Notes on contributors.

Contributors: Wes Aelbrecht, Barbara Boifava, Rojer J. Crum, Catalina Fara, Maria Pia Fontana, Letizia Goretti, Ellen Handy, Andrew Higgot, Lilyana Karadjova, Birgit Schillak-Hammers, Alexandra Tommasini

Serie: Collana di Architettura - Nuova Serie

Subjects: Architecture, Design, Art, Urban and Regional Studies

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