Urban Photography/Cultural Geography: Spaces, Objects, Events

Geography Compass 8/3 (2014): 151–168, 10.1111/gec3.12120

Urban Photography/Cultural Geography: Spaces, Objects,Events

Mia A. Hunt*Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London

AbstractImage-making is bound up in our experience of urban space. In artistic and academic practice,contemporary urban photography has critically reworked street photography traditions, embracingits energy and spontaneity, while inviting a more dialogic and reflexive approach. Although the useof urban photography has been somewhat limited in cultural geography research, the practice hasenormous potential to complement and enhance contemporary enquiries in the field – particularlythose that highlight feelings, experience, and textures of place and draw from more-than-representational approaches. A return to making urban photos also chimes with the current approachesthat incorporate creative practice and performative methodologies to introduce uncertainty intoresearch. 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 urbanphotography and on what these images may do for research. In particular, photography may helpevoke the feeling of place and its material richness. By focusing on urban microgeographies and byopening 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 provokesthe animation and agency of matter. Finally, as well as highlighting the matter of things, images cancapture the matter of our own bodies caught up in events with the cities we inhabit. Urbanphotography offers a way of doing research that opens up city spaces, objects, and events, so we canbetter reflect on the complex textures, feelings, and experiences of urban space.

Full Text

The ubiquity of digital cameras has seen an explosion of photography, flooding everydayexperience with everyday images. Urban photography surrounds us – on street-fashion blogs,smartphones, and photo-sharing sites like Flickr and Facebook, photographic exhibitions,Google Street View, eye-witness shots in the news, and beyond. The impetus for this sortof image-making may vary, but often at play is a fascination with place and a nod to – or winkat – the phenomena of everyday city life. Since its inception, photography has been used torespond to the “visual complexity of a city as both an image and an experience” (Clarke1997, p. 75). Long embraced in artistic and popular traditions, urban photography is revealingits potential in cultural geography’s explorations of urban space and the quotidian happeningsof urban life. This article highlights some ways in which cultural geography may respond tothis movement and provides some points of departure for those incorporating visual practicein urban research.Although the use of photography in urban research is not new, some current explorations

approach urban image-making in a different way. This practice chimes with contemporaryenquiries that highlight feelings, textures, and experience of place and draw frommore-than-representational approaches. Here, I discuss these developments and considerhow cultural geographers might use the camera to explore city spaces, objects, events, and

© 2014 The Author(s)Geography Compass © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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experience. In this article, I therefore approach the practice of urban photography through avery particular perspective. In doing so, I am not looking to dismiss the enormous value ofurban and street photography for other social scientific explorations of places that document,compare, explore, and tune into environments using the camera. The extensive use of photog-raphy by geographers has been well detailed by Ryan (1997; 2013), Rose (2001; 2010; 2012),M. Crang (2010), Schwartz and Ryan (2003), Markwell (2000), and Schwartz (1996). Myspecific focus sits within a vast field of photographic visual culture. Whereas I concentrate onone genre of still urban photography, other forms of visual culture have been drawn outelsewhere – including auto-photography (see Datta 2012; Jemison 2011; McIntyre 2003;Oldrup and Carstensen, 2012), online photo-sharing (see Murray 2008), the analysis of historicphotography (see M. Crang 1996; 1997; Nead 2004), visually recording sociopoliticallandscapes (Farrar 2005), photographic juxtaposition (see Hall 2010), video (Garrett 2010),and installation. I focus on the production of photographs, as opposed to their subsequent livesin books, galleries, screen, or online. Finally, I concentrate not on the analysis of photographs,but on new ways of doing photography in urban space. In this article, the task I set for urbanphotographic practice is to capture the more intangible aspects of urban space, through thepractice of working with a camera and in a spirit of collaboration with place.This approach is, of course, not exclusive to urban contexts. Caitlin DeSilvey’s (2007)

work in a Montana homestead, John Wylie’s (2006) images of north Devon coastallandscapes, and Tim Edensor’s (2005) photos of industrial ruins provide examples of captivatingwork occurring in more rural environments. In the city, cultural geography research has madesurprisingly limited the use of photography, though notable exceptions include: Latham andMcCormack’s (2007; 2009) pedagogical fieldwork in Berlin; Latham’s (2003) and Bijoux andMyers (2006) use of diary photographs; Coles’ (2013) topographic photographic essay ofLondon’s Borough Market; Edensor et al.’s (2008) photographic essay of the London Olympicsite; Simpson’s (2012) time-lapse photography pursuing rhythmanalysis in public space; andJohnsen et al.’s (2008) auto-photography work with homeless people. Here, I hope to illustratethe potential of photography in cultural geography’s urban research. To do so, I use images by anumber of photographers and researchers, and some from my own doctoral research, whichuses visual ethnography to explore the materiality and agency of London’s ad hoc shops – poundshops, corners shops, kiosks, and the like. Like my ownwork, many of the other images portrayLondon’s urban environment. I selected these images because, for me, they embody more-than-representational approaches to urban landscapes and attend to its materials. Many bothdescribe place and expose it as unknowable. Some of the more celebrated images I discuss arenot included owing to copyright issues, but can be found through links provided in theendnotes or through a quick Google search.This article begins by describing how urban photography has emerged and is understood

within photographic and academic practices. It then explores how urban photography fitsinto a history of visual methods in geography and contemporary approaches to research.Finally, it suggests how photography might be used to support research concerned withfeelings, textures, and experience of urban places.

The Emergence of Urban Photography

Urban photography describes image-making that engages critically both with the city andwith photographic traditions – mainly uniting the inquisitive eye of the documentaryphotographer with the immediacy of street photography. The term has caught the attention ofresearchers engaging in visual culture fairly recently, particularly in sociology and anthropology.As an academic practice, urban photography falls under the remit of “visual urbanism”,

© 2014 The Author(s) Geography Compass 8/3 (2014): 151–168, 10.1111/gec3.12120Geography Compass © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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defined by the International Association of Visual Urbanists as “an intention to make senseof research and interact with urban life through lens-based media or other forms ofvisualisation” (iAVU 2012). The Association, which emerged from the rich visual sociologytraditions at Goldsmiths, University of London, is one of the many organisations investigatingintersections between visual and academic practices. Work by Goldsmiths’ sociologists PaulHalliday1 (2006; 2012), Les Back (2007), and Caroline Knowles (Knowles 2006, 2012;Knowles and Harper 2010; Knowles and Sweetman 2004) provides excellent examples ofhow urban research can be strengthened by urban photography. Like many visual urbanists,their photographic practices and collaborations embrace the gestures and immediacy of streetphotography while reworking it to overcome a host of criticisms waged against the popularand artistic practice. Before I discuss these criticisms, the character of urban photography andstreet photography is worth further explanation.The terms “urban” and “street photography” are often used interchangeably, but their

history and associations call for dissection. Although “street photography” was first used todescribe the 19th century commercial practice of street-based portraiture (Batchen 2009), itis more often used to describe artistic photographs that candidly capture people’s everydaymovements through urban space (Westerbeck and Meyerowitz 1994; Howarth andMcLaren 2010). This sort of street photography emerged from the gaze and amusement ofthe flâneur – a 19th century urban wanderer and dandy, discussed by Baudelaire (Tester 1994).Its emergence can also be traced through the mid-20th century, shadowing surrealistapproaches to landscapes championed by Guy Debord and the Situationists’ Movement.While “street photography” has been used to describe the still turn-of-the-century Parisianlandscapes and objects captured by Eugène Atget, for other pioneers like George Brassaï,Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Doisneau, it describes accidents, chance encounters,and presence of the body in urban space.Unlike documentary photography, street photography is often humorous in intent and

seldom driven by editorial commission. Street photography is not reportage, but varies in itsapproach to documentation. While some street photographers endeavour to record the “realworld” in reaction to constructed commercial photography (Howarth & McLaren 2010),others revel in contributing to surreal urban imaginations. Indeed, if some street photographsseem fantastical, it is because many are. Doisneau’s 1950 The Kiss by the Hotel de Ville, whichcaptures two aspiring actors in a romantic embrace on a bustling Paris street, is a famously stagedexample. Similarly, Jeff Wall’s photos construct tense urban encounters (Lauter 2001). Be it set-up or not, these images appear to present a sparkling flash of urban life caught on the fly.Today, many street photographers still see themselves celebrating the physicality and

temporality of space and the ironies of life. As the manifesto of feted street photographywebsite iN-PUBLiC (2013) maintains, their photographers share an “ability to see theunusual in the everyday and to capture the moment”. Street photography thrives on “momentsof the bizarre, strange, intriguing” (Scott 2007, p. 88). Although countless photographers’workwould seem to fit the label, many reject the term because of its associated machismo andobjectification – characteristics that many photographers and researchers have strived to shed.Street photography is criticised for engaging the exotic and comic over the critical or

political (Halliday 2012). The cheekiness of the genre may result in an inequity between pho-tographer and subject; street photography allows “the viewer to remain in control, positioned assomewhat distant from and superior to what the images shows us” (Rose 2001, p. 22). Sontag(1977) likens the approach to the detached, objectifying gaze of the flâneur. The unrelentingattitudes of many street photographers, and the unevenness of knowing between the audienceand the subjects, have also seen street photography related to a patriarchal way of looking. Rose(2001, p. 22) remarks that street photography often celebrates a “kind of macho power”.



Indeed, like 19th century explorers, many photographers comb the streets for the perfect trophyshot with little sensitivity to place or its people.The wide-spread criticism of street photography has resulted in an aversion to the term,

especially among researchers working in a humanities tradition. Still, some of its original spirithas been retained. In urban photography, photographers and academics have criticallyreworked the practice of street photography, embracing its energy and spontaneity to engagewith cities and urban experience.

Urban Photography in Geographical Thought and Practice

As touched on above, the social sciences and humanities have rich traditions of employingvisual culture in research practice and dissemination. Photographs actively contribute todiverse geographical knowledge (Rose 2008, p. 151) and have been used in myriad waysto support cultural geographical research. Photographs are used variously as illustrations, asmeans of comparison, as visual data, as (found) objects of analysis, as means of engagingparticipants through photo-diaries and interviews, to explore spaces through auto-ethnography,in photo-essays, and more. Whereas it has much to offer ethnographic investigations, photog-raphy is not without its critics and dangers. Uncritical floundering with a camera, false sense ofknowing while skimming the surface, impressionable beautification of everything, trivialisationand disempowering of the subject, and selectivity of the frame, all allow a photographer to castimages in problematic ways (see Rose 2012). Researchers championing critical visual methodo-logies in anthropology (Banks 2001; Pink 2007), cultural studies (Lister and Wells, 2000),sociology (Holliday 2001), and cultural geography (Rose 2012) have all stressed the importanceof reflexivity and warned against the uncritical use of both cameras and images. As Sarah Pink(2003) cautions, visual research is often done about or on subjects instead of with them. Academicsconcerned with critical visual methodologies are rightly wary about street photography as a wayof doing research. But until recently, they concerned themselves very little with what theseimages could do for research practice, or how research practices could reshape such photography,concentrating instead on what these images meant.Whereas realist approaches see photographs as objective forms of evidence, critical

poststructuralist approaches privilege the construction of images, and choices made in theimage-making process, over image content (Pink 2007). These methodologies see photographsas partial fragments and tend to use them as objects of analysis, embedded and meaningful in thecultural context of their production, capture, and site of viewing (Becker 2007; Rose 2012;Schwartz and Ryan, 2003). Photographs have been approached by poststructuralists asproblematic “representations fraught with cultural meaning” (Rose 2008, p. 152), and yet theymay also offer new ways of doing research.Cautions against photographic objectification, masculine approaches to subjects in professional

street photography, and a shift towards image analysis kept researchers away from usingphotography in urban research. But perhaps, as Sanders (2007) suggests, the baby was thrownout with the bathwater. With a reflexive awareness of attitude and approach, researchers arenow navigating these pitfalls to integrate visual methods into doing research.

MAKING AND DOING

Human geography is currently seeing a return to making images. As well as incorporating auto-photography and photo-interviews into research methodologies (see Hall 2009; Rose 2012),photography is part of geography’s recent groundswell of visual culture production and partof what Tolia-Kelly (2012, p. 135) calls the “neo-visual turn”. Instead of acting as commen-tators external to artistic processes, cultural geographers have begun engaging directly with



creative arts practice and energising the discipline as a result (P. Crang 2010). In this way,photographs are not merely objects of analysis or illustrations, but form part of a researchpractice – “a mode of argument and creative performance” (Ryan 2003, p. 236). Rather thanillustrating findings, these photos “illustrate an analysis” (Rose 2008, p. 158) and an approachto place; they represent “research as practices” (Rose and Tolia-Kelly, 2012, p. 3).This shift responds to calls by Latham (2003, p. 2000) and others (see Ryan 2003; Thrift

2000) to “imbue traditional research methodologies with a sense of the creative, the practical,and being with practice-ness”. Such approaches also confront disconnections betweengeographical research and its representation, identified by Sanders (2007), della Dora(2009), and others. They may also materialise more-than-representational approaches,connecting critical reflection and doing photography. For some cultural geographers, it maybe useful to relate urban photography with more-than-representational approaches toresearch in this way, however, in so doing, there are some important caveats. Much of thevisual work used here is not driven by more-than-representational or non-representationalapproaches, and indeed materialised before these approaches emerged. My intention hereis not to enrol this photographic – or academic – work in its agenda, but to consider howsome photography may chime with this genre of research. As Latham and McCormack(2009, p. 256, italics in original) suggest,

the generation of images can […] work to foreground the peculiar quality of materiality to whichnon-representational approaches to the urban encourage us to attending: materiality as distributed,relational and obdurate. In this sense images provide ways of thinking the materialities of cities inmovement and stillness.

As part of this neo-visual turn, geographers are engaging in “artistic practices [that] provide away of folding uncertainty into the act of producing an account” (Dwyer and Davies 2010,p. 93). While this photographic work may be illustrative, it does not try to define placesvisually or pin them down. Instead, it sees space as unfolding.By their nature, photographs are polysemic (Barthes 1981). This is an asset to methodolo-

gical approaches that use images “as prisms that refract what can be seen in quite particularways” (Rose 2008, p. 151). New photographic approaches invite multiple and imaginativereadings by their audience and photographer. Without concern for truths and realistparadigms, the ambiguity of images is considered an advantage both in the execution of aproject and interpretation of results (Knowles and Sweetman 2004). This vagueness maykeep research loose. It may also help support approaches to research concerned with transientfeelings, textures, and experience.

Urban Photography in Practice

For some geographers, image-making has become part of inhabiting and rethinking the value ofeveryday spaces. In cultural geography and beyond, photography adopts the critical awarenessof poststructuralist critique while embracing the potentialities of photography. These include itsambiguity, ability to highlight the agency of place and things, capacity to play with hierarchy,and engagement with creative practice and place through the body. Through the remainderof this article, I explore these potentialities in relation to city spaces, objects, and events. The firstsection on urban space explores how urban photography can be used to contemplate thefeelings of place. The second considers how images can play with the hierarchies of objectsand interrogate their matter. Finally, I suggest how photography may capture fleetingevents – the moments of exchange – that constitute our embodied urban experiences.



SPACES, FEELINGS, AND OPENNESS

New approaches to photographic practice are concerned not with documenting places butwith evoking their feeling. They endeavour to make photographs with places, not of them.This is not unlike the more collaborative relationships that researchers strive to develop withhuman research participants. Indeed, these approaches imply character and agency of place.Rose (2008, p. 155) dubs this photography “evocation”, which suggests summoning thesupernatural and aptly implies its ability to highlight affective power. By acknowledgingthe agency of place, landscape and objects become participants in the photographic practiceand may seem to come alive.To avoid over-familiarising the viewer with space and closing its possibilities, this work

employs a number of approaches. I highlight two here. Firstly, contemporary urbanphotography often focuses on textured urban surfaces to “convey the qualities of materialitymore directly to the viewer” (Rose 2008, p. 155). Secondly, these approaches use technologiesand practices that embrace distortion, thereby acknowledging that not everything is, or need be,visible (Pink 2003).In artistic urban photography, the reserved monotone of Stephen Shore’s2 work provides an

excellent example of how urban materiality may reveal itself (see Figure 1). As a counterpoint,compare this with the flirtatious quaint moments of Cartier–Bresson’s street photography (seeFigure 2). Shore’s work embodies the stylistic flattening of images in the post-war era – a stylethat has persisted in recent artistic and academic work. This tradition in urban photography wascrystallised in a seminal 1975 exhibition curated by William Jenkins in Rochester, New York.The exhibition called New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape also included

Fig. 1. Stephen Shore, Victoria Avenue and Alberta Street, Regina, Saskatchewan, August 17, 1974, 1974 © StephenShore/Art +Commerce.


Fig. 2. Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, Italy, Campania, Naples, 1960, 1960.


photographers Robert Adam, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke,3 Nicholas Nixon, JohnSchott,4 Henry Wessel, Jr., and Bernd and Hilla Becher. These artists did not concernthemselves with visual poetry in the classical sense or metaphorical meaning (Westerbeck1998). Together, their images presented depersonalised landscapes that were vibrant withmaterial and a sense of the uncanny. These images left open the possibilities of space.The feeling of space can be communicated by capturing its material and in the visual

qualities of the photograph. At times, ambience is better communicated with softness andvagueness over visual clarity. Work by London-based photographer Stephen Gill5 capturesthe dreaminess and textures of banal urban landscapes. His series Archaeology in Reverse from2007 captures interstitial spaces and material remains in East London (see Figure 3). As the titlesuggests, the images show latent phenomena and material traces of possible futures. In manyways, Gill’s work follows the tradition of the New Topographics. In an interview, he says,

I’ve taught myself to really step back and have that equal treatment of things. I know that whilephotography is often seen as the amplification of something, it is also good at doing the opposite,quietening things and not enhancing them. (Blanchard 2010)

Themuted tone and feeling of place is evoked not only through Gill’s selection of the frame, butalso through the technology he used: an analogue camera bought for 50 pence at a local market.Although I would not hazard any artistic comparison, a similar bleariness was realised in a

series of pinhole camera images for my own practice. As well as using a digital single lensreflex (D-SLR), my visual ethnography of London’s ad hoc shops uses this simple device.The results have been unpredictable: because the shutter is manually opened for a numberof seconds and the film is manually wound, the images are blurry and warp in intriguingways. The process captures the animation of things and spaces – the unsteadiness of my hand,the flow of the city, and the vibrations of stationary things (see Figure 4). It brings softness tothe characteristic linearity and shininess of the brands I capture; the camera literally takes theedge off, melting brands into the texture of the city.


Fig. 3. Stephen Gill, Extract from Archaeology in Reverse, 2005-2007. Copyright Stephen Gill.


In both my project and Gill’s, technologies shift the photographer’s relationship to space andsubject. Sans viewfinder, the pinhole mediates my experience of space much less than a D-SLR;my presence and eye contact in the space remain uninterrupted. In Gill’s work, his understated,collaborative approach with landscape and camera resonates in his images. The unobtrusiveobjectness of both cameras, help make images with places, not of them; they behave like a “thingamong things” (Wylie 2007) opposed to a technology through the process.Working with low-tech devices grants photography a new materiality; greater agency is

afforded to light, chemicals, and chance. And yet, capturing space in more textured andspontaneous ways need not be analogue. Take artist and sociologist Rachel Sarah Jones6

who uses filters over her lens to reflect light, creating a richly layered effect (see Figure 5).The process diminishes legibility to disorient our understanding and perception of theeveryday urban places she captures. As another example from my own work, a Deptfordstreet market was captured with a D-SLR – literally from the hip – through a plastic bagon a rainy day (see Figure 6). The graininess of smart phone images and Instagram filterscan also inject spontaneity into the photography. Chance may also become a participantby establishing systems and rhythms of capture – taking an image at the same time everyday, or after every 50 steps on an urban walk, for example.The relationship between matter and image-making is complicated and has been a subject of

much photographic work. Akin to the analogue tactility of the pinhole, many photographersobserve the material in – and of – their practice to make photography more physical and tointerrogate the relationship between camera and place. For example, while not explicitly urban,the immersive camera obscura ofMartinNewth’s7 Solar Cinema project refocuses the surroundingenvironment to consider the process and materiality of photography and our interaction with


Fig. 4. Mia Hunt, Hot Dog, 2012.


images. Ben Alper’s8 Terrain Vague series similarly makes ordinary space undecipherable bychanging the apparent relationship of objects to the landscape. The images of his staged graphicsculptures highlight the uncanniness of urban landscapes and transitions of matter. In both artists’work, space is material, felt, and visual.Haphazardness in photographic processes, unpredictability of images, and the use of

analogue technologies rematerialize practices of image-making, and help challenge ideas thatphotographs are truthful, accurate, and transparent (Rose 2003; Ryan 2003). This supportsapproaches to research which avoid projected truths and realist paradigms to open spacefor interpretation. Images need not be blurry to be atmospheric and reveal the feelings ofplace; however – as I hope these examples show – ambiguity and openness in photographscan evoke the textures of spaces and engage contemporary research approaches.

OBJECTS, TEXTURES, AND ANIMATION

Cities are dynamic assemblages of interconnected objects, people, surfaces, and forces(DeLanda 2006). Each macro happening can be traced through scales of consideration tosmaller and smaller parts (Bennett 2010). Attending to the micro-geographies of place – toobjects and their component parts –may reveal much about our cities and the dynamic forcesthat shape them. Citing work by Kathleen Stewart (2007) and Les Back (2007), Philip Crang(2010) has celebrated the promise of research connecting everyday minutiae, experience, andaffect with politics. The camera can help tune into the significance of these everyday texturesand the matter of things. It may explore the deep urban surface and question how and why it


Fig. 5. Rachel Sarah Jones, Lumino-City, Reflection Series, no. 2, 2012.


came to be. For Rose (2012, p. 298), photographs can “capture something of the sensory rich-ness and human inhabitation of urban environments.” Some object photography interests itselfwith these everyday textures, explores the relationships between objects and space, and playswith the perceived value of mundane things.

Fig. 6. Mia Hunt, Deptford Window, 2011.



Photography has long been discussed in association with the uncanny – making thefamiliar strange (Barthes 1981; Rose 2008). By acknowledging the power and performativecapacity of images, geographers may use photographs to destabilise our understandings ofplace and question established hierarchies. For Hall (2009, p. 460), “photography producedand presented experimentally can be used to question, criticize, or deconstruct the taken forgranted by representing it in new or unusual ways”. Focussing on the materiality of things –theoretically and photographically – minimises difference and allows us to rethink ourencounters with everyday objects. Although this flattening has been described as problematic(Sontag 1977), armed with awareness of the lens’ capacity to play, the camera may not justflatten, but elevate objects, granting them status. William Eggleston’s Memphis (Tricycle) from1970 famously imbues a commonplace tricycle with this power and potential against itslow-slung suburban landscape.In a more contemporary setting and closer to home, London-based artist RichardWentworth

has created a rich body of work addressing the mutability of urban matter. Wentworth carriesthe lineage of Atget and has exhibited alongside him (Bush 2001); both capture things in (andout of) place and interrogate city life and landscape. As Harriet Hawkins (2010, p. 807) writes,

In his attention to pre-existing practices Wentworth’s work sits in a long tradition of artists, creativepractitioners and cultural theories who do not so much create anew as cause us to look anew, and soto recognise the richness of existing potentialities.

The commonplace objects in Wentworth’s work are shown in states of transformation – intheir material and value. His ongoing photographic series Making Do and Getting By bringsattention to urban objects held in temporary association with others (see Figures 7 and 8).Two worn planks leaning together alongside a cement mixer, or a clothes hanger jamminga clouded window, show how objects move across space and time through their lives, andthrough the lives of humans and non-humans that interact with them. Highlighting theutility of mundane materials also captures the capacity and potential of their matter.As discussed, photography in general – and street photography in particular – has been

discussed as an aggressive way of looking (Berger 1972; Sontag 1977). Urban photographers

Fig. 7. Richard Wentworth, Islington, London, From Making Do and Getting By, 1983.


Fig. 8. Richard Wentworth, Staten Island, New York, From Making Do and Getting By, 1975.


have sought to counter this with a more dialogic visual practice, as a way of exchanging gazes(Back 2007). This notion of exchange can be extended to the non-human as well. Althoughnot referring explicitly to photography, for Merleau-Ponty (1945, p. 197) “our gaze,prompted by the experience of our own body, will discover in all other ‘objects’ the miracleof expression”. Recent work by materialists like Jane Bennett (2010), bestows matter withagency and makes a case for its animation (see also Amin and Thrift 2002; Whatmore2006; Thrift 2007). Following this line of thought, things reveal themselves to us and mayindeed stare back through our photographic practice. Sontag (1977, p. 98) writes that“one of the perennial successes of photography has been its strategy of turning living beingsinto things and things into living being”. In light of a new materialist ethics, it is worthconsidering how we may capture the gaze of things with the camera.These notions have inspired my own approach to objects and visual practice. Photography

has, for example, allowed me to reflect on how routines, use, space, and time can imbue onceidentical factory-made branded objects with a sense of unique character. In a series of Wall’sice-cream signs, I hope to reveal the individuality and vibrancy of these everyday urban things(see Figure 9). The camera allows me to tune into the material difference and nuance of thesemass-produced objects and celebrate them as one of a kind. These objects are at once part ofboth a uniform global brand and a local domestic practice. Through the series, I endeavouredto lock eyes with the sign, in all its mutations, allowing each a chance to reveal its stories.As seen – perhaps best in Wentworth’s work – photography may turn objects into things,

solicit their gazes, and capture their more-than-human potential. Through visual methods,we may also elevate the mundane and grant agency to objects. In my experience, irrespectiveof resulting artistic merit, the process of making these images allowed me to question the value ofthe everyday through direct visual and sensory engagement with these things. Acknowledgingthe value of this embodied experience brings me to my final section.


Fig. 9. Mia Hunt, From Wall’s, 2012.


EVENTS, BODIES, AND EXCHANGE

Photographs capture an instant of city life – itself a stream of moments, interactions, andexchanges. Urban images expose not only an instant of time and space, but also a momentof exchange between photographer, people, places, and things. These relationships arerevealed in the frame. John Berger (1979, p. 9) writes that “we never look just at one thing;we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves”. Image-making is inhe-rently collaborative (Pink 2003); we expose our attitudes and approaches to places and peoplein the images wemake (Back 2009). As discussed, photography has not always been approachedwith such sensitivity. In Street Photography Now, Howarth and McLaren (2010, p. 9) delight inWalker Evans’ advice to other street-photographers, encouraging them to “stare, pry, listen,eavesdrop”. Such an aggressive approach is evident in some of his images and more pronouncedin famous street photography by William Klein, Garry Winogrand, or Lee Friedlander.Compare this work with the tenderness of the About the Streets Project done in partnership

with the public on London’s Brick Lane, highlighted by Les Back (2007) (see Figure 10).These collaborative portraits, captured by Nicola Evans, Antonio Genco, and GerardMitchell under the facilitation of Paul Halliday, reveal as much about the approach as theydo about the subjects and neighbourhood. The project harkens back to an original streetphotography – the street portrait – described by Batchen (2009, p. 27) as “eye-to-eye,consensual, collaborative, cooperative, and therefore at least potentially, empathetic”. ForBack (2007, p. 99), these photographs show a commitment to “enter into dialogue” withthe world. As seen with Nobby, an open approach may encourage subjects to openly offerthemselves and their gaze. Making an image is an event, an invitation for exchange, and amoment that cultivates and reveals our relationships with a space, its objects, and its people.


Fig. 10. Nicola Evans, Antonio Genco and Gerard Mitchell, Noddy, From About the Streets Project, 2001.


As well as exposing our attitudes, photographs also reveal the presence of our bodies in space.Street photography has been described as “the expression of one’s whole organism in thephotographic act” (Scott 2007, p. 4). Looking is always an embodied practice (Pink 2003),and representations of place have always emerged through situated practice and performance(Driver 2003). Focusing on the practice of photography reminds how important the body isin the experience of place and production of visual culture (M. Crang 1997). Because it exploresplace through the body and the view, photography aligns with Ingold’s (2000, p. 22)“education of attention”. A camera in hand can heighten awareness of the visual and the mate-rial aspects of space. It can make us look at space and think about it in different ways; we makesense of the city through dialogue with the camera (Halliday 2006). This process of reviewingand rethinking can be central to the practice of research.A range of other new topographic encounters share urban photography’s celebration

of the body’s presence in space, curiosity, and momentary chance encounter. Culturalgeography has been inspired by, and responded to, a breadth of contemporary situatedexplorations including: the writings of Nick Papadimitriou, Iain Sinclair, and Will Self;the drawings of Laura Oldfield Ford9; the academic research of John Wylie (2005; 2006)and Toby Butler (2006; 2007); the performances of Mike Pearson (2006); the film-



making of Patrick Keiller (2009; Daniels 1995); and the site-writing of Jane Rendell (2010).Approaches by these urban wanderers stimulate the affective qualities and re-enchantmentof place. As seen in the visual work of Stephen Gill and Richard Wentworth, thepractice of urban photography aligns greatly with this sort of topographic exploration;they have a shared history (Coles 2013), involve embodied experience, and revealsimilar roots in psycho-geography. Photography can work in parallel, and as a tool,in these sorts of projects, but is used surprisingly little in these works and those theyinspire. As cultural geographers engage in their own embodied research practices,attention through a lens may prove fruitful.Finally, as well as capturing events and exchange, by staying open, photography can

capture potential. In the literal snap of the camera, photography can visualise moments ofencounter, commemorate them, and create them. Photography captures not only presenceand instants, but also potential of the urban space. Urban photography “translates the giveninto something virtual or latent, something which has yet to realise itself in all its possibilities”(Scott 2007, p. 41). It may capture the affective potential of urban encounters and therelationships between space, objects, events, and ourselves.

Conclusion

Geography is a visual discipline and has drawn from a rich palette of visual methods throughtime. The return to making photos has opened up new possibilities for photography whichchime both with a popular fascination with imaging the city and current academicapproaches to space. This approach reworks street photography traditions, celebratingspontaneity while inviting a more open and reflexive practice. Cultural geography researchconcerned with feelings, textures, and experience of place can be complemented andenhanced by an exploration through the lens. As discussed, photography need not be simplyillustrative. It may become part of a performative methodology and analysis that foldsuncertainty into the work. In doing so, photography may help evoke feeling of place. Thisis documentary of another kind: one which complicates the relationship between portrayaland knowledge. These images are not only evidential but also depict atmosphere andemotion. They are at times both self-explanatory and mysterious; space, light, and time aredescribed but often revealed as unknowable. Through attention to material and by openingwork to chance and distortion, images may create new spaces for interpretation in urbanresearch. Attending to material with the camera also enables photographers to play with ideasof value and hierarchy and provokes the animation and agency of matter. As well ashighlighting the matter of things, images can capture the matter of our own bodies caughtup in moments and events with the cities we inhabit.Although I have focused on urban photography’s potential contributions to cultural

geography research, it has also shown potential as a teaching tool (Latham and McCormack,2007; 2009; Sanders 2007; Sidaway 2002) and been discussed as a way to reach newaudiences (Tolia-Kelly 2012). In the classroom, in the field, in public forums, and inresearch practice, urban photography offers a way of doing research to open city spaces,objects, and events, so we can better reflect on the complex textures, feelings, and experiencesof urban place.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the reviewers for their valuable comments and Phil Crang for offeringhis shrewd eye and sound guidance.



Short Biography

Mia Hunt’s research explores materiality, place-making, vernacular practice, and diversity inthe city. She has published variously on aesthetics and home-making, inclusion in the“creative city”, gentrification and family housing, and urban branding in gay space. Herauthored or co-authored publications have appeared in Urban Geography, The CanadianJournal of Urban Research, Progressive Planning, Growth and Change, and The International Ency-clopedia of Housing and Home. Mia is currently undertaking a PhD in Cultural Geography atRoyal Holloway, University of London, under the supervision of Professor Philip Crang.Her project considers everyday shop-keeping as a curatorial practice and focuses on London’sad hoc consumption spaces – pound shops, corner shops, souvenir stands, kiosks, and the like.The research is detailed on her visual field blog: http://keepingshop.blogspot.co.uk/. Thisproject weaves together her academic and professional backgrounds in urban planning, fineand applied arts, and community engagement. She holds a BFA in Fine Art and Design fromConcordia University and an MSc in Urban Planning and Design from the University ofToronto. Mia’s work is generously funded by the Social Science and Humanities ResearchCouncil of Canada and Royal Holloway, University of London.

Notes

* Correspondence address: Mia A. Hunt, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London.E-mail: [email protected]

1 See Paul Halliday’s official website: http://www.paulhalliday.org/.2 See Stephen Shore’s official website: http://stephenshore.net/, particularly his series entitled “Uncommon Places”.3 See Frank Gohlke’s official website: http://www.frankgohlke.com/.4 See John Schott’s official website: http://www.johnschottphotography.com/.5 See Stephen Gill’s official website: http://www.stephengill.co.uk/ and http://www.nobodybooks.com.6 See Rachel Sarah Jones’ official website: http://www.rachelsarahjones.com/.7 See Marin Newth’s official website and project entitled “Solar Cinema”: http://www.martinnewth.com/solarcinema.html.8 See Ben Alper’s official website and series entitled “Terrain Vague”: http://benalper.com/terrain_vague.html.9 See Laura Oldfield Ford’s official website: http://lauraoldfieldford.blogspot.co.uk/.

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Documents

Urban Photography/Cultural Geography: Spaces, Objects, Events