Photography and the City
An Exhibition by ARTH 4602
Text and original photographs are copyright 2009. Cover and back photograph by Robert Evans, 2006. This catalogue is a class project of ARTH 4602: Photography and the City, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON.
Introduction This catalogue is the final product of an assignment for Carleton University course ARTH 4602: Photography and the City, which considers intersections, overlaps and gaps between conceptual frameworks of the urban environment and photographic practices. The course instructors asked senior undergraduate and graduate students to choose a photograph that pertained to the topic of “photography and the city” and write an interpretation of it. The selected image could be from any one of a number of sources: an existing image from family album; a new image taken in and around Ottawa, or another city; or an “appropriated” image such as a postcard, work of art, etc. The written interpretation was to be a commentary drawing on one or more theoretical issues discussed in class, such as the city as a machine or the city as portrait subject. Together, the image and text were intended to open a pathway for the eventual reader to consider the image from a particular vantage point. The photographs and texts that follow illustrate the diverse responses to the assignment. Students collected an eclectic assortment of images, most taken by them, to represent “the city” as a place or concept and offered manifold approaches to their interpretation. Some of the responses integrate course readings covered in the first half of the term (see bibliography at the end of the catalogue) and some draw on other sources and are even more poetic than scholarly. It is interesting to note that most of the students used photographs of cities other than the one in which they currently reside, namely Ottawa. Does this say something about our exoticizing notions of the city or, more likely, something about the intersection of the social practice of photography (most of the photos of other places were taken by the writers) and our ideas of the city? Who amongst us routinely photographs our own city? Does a relatively small and placid city not meet the mental image definition of what makes a city? The city becomes appropriate subject matter when travelling and an aide-mémoire or personal souvenir is desired, raising questions of situating the tourist gaze (Urry 1990) in the “other” city in many of the photographs included in this collection. Another notable trend in the catalogue is the importance given to architecture and the built environment over urban inhabitants in imaging the city. The nineteenth-century touchstones for our understanding of the experience of the city are tellingly absent. Where are the crowded sidewalks that led to Georg Simmel’s identification of the urban “blasé attitude” (Simmel 1964)? Where are Charles Baudelaire’s and Walter Benjamin’s flanêurs – except as the photographers themselves (Benjamin 1970)? Where is the experience of Edgar Allan Poe’s “man of the crowd” (Poe 1984)? In some cases, the distance between photographer and street has created an image of the city as “optical artifact” (de Certeau 1984), the purview of “voyeurs” rather than “walkers. Have our notions and understandings of the city changed so much since the twentieth century that we imagine it differently now? Can we still be astonished by the sheer sensory overload of the city, as was Simone de Beauvoir during her first trip to America (de Beauvoir 1947) or has the “necrotized” city as spectacle overwhelmed our agency to act within it, as public projection artist Krzysztof Wodiczko has argued? Perhaps the city become so naturalized in our experience that those aspects that modern commentators have found so distressing about the growing metropolises of their day – the crowded streets, the crush of people, the anonymity – become “just the way it is?” Indeed, it’s ill-advised practice to pose questions in an introduction that are not answered in the texts that follow, but perhaps the careful reader will find the answers to some of these questions over the next couple of pages. Or, he or she may find more compelling and important questions prompted by this catalogue that can lead to new images and imaginings of the city, our dominant form of habitation that shapes so much of our culture. R.E. & M.R.
Christophe Valsecchi, Avenue des Champs Elysees, Paris, 2004. This image of the Avenue des Champs Élysées by Christophe Valsecchi (a professional architectural photographer) is one that surpasses mere architectural documentation and becomes a classically appealing photograph with much emphasis on the picturesque. As a professional photographer of architecture, Valsecchi climbs onto scaffolding in order to capture this and many other incredibly interesting vantage points (Jameson 2008). This almost vertigo inducing view allows the viewer to join Valsecchi on that dangerous and high scaffold. We are placed amongst the stone figures that appear to be watching over the bustling city of Paris below. The emotions conjured in the viewer can range anywhere from a secretive voyeur to a noble guardian of the people in the streets. One of the stone figures looks back to the viewer and invites them into their group to look over the city. Valsecchi has captured a vast cityscape in this photograph that allows the audience to view Paris as far as the eye could see. This strange and very high vantage point can create an ethereal or mystical experience for the viewer, especially when combined with these stoic figures that stand on the ledge of the building. Whatever the viewer interprets these figures to be partaking in they can’t escape the feeling that they are privy to a special event. Although the photograph was taken in 2004 and there are many cars in the image, there is still a strong feeling of the past. The use of black and white photography and the showcasing of the beautiful old architecture of Paris remind us of other classic photographs of the city by famous photographers like Eugene Atget or Robert Doisneau. However, like mentioned, new technology is present in this image, and that contrast brings to mind another interpretation – one of civic pride. The old sculpture/architecture is juxtaposed with the new technology (modern cars and street lamps, etc.) below, showing to the viewer that the city has sustained a long history and it is being showcased to the viewer in order to solidify that image of prosperity. A second contrast can be seen in the stillness of the architecture and the movement of the pedestrians and cars below. This contrast brings to mind a second reading of the space that was captured in the photograph; the idea of the separation of space into the vita activa and vita contemplativa. The building and the stone figures on the left represent the vita contemplativa, not only because the physical building represents the museum/institute, but also because architecture itself is a scholarly pursuit that would be included in this division of space. The street space below represents the vita activa; the people walking to their jobs, and cars moving through the street – physical engagement. This vantage point, placing the viewer up high above the city below also reflects this interpretation if we relate the two spaces to heaven and Earth. The figures occupy a more spiritual realm (vita contemplativa) while the people below occupy a physical realm (vita activa). This separation of space, in my opinion, should not be read in a negative way, such as to say that scholars are above/superior to labourers. I believe that this separation is merely an observation of our daily lives. While most of us spend our days as one of those people in the streets, today Valsecchi has given us the opportunity to be more contemplative of our day to day life, and he has done this all while capturing a spectacular view of the city. K.G.
L.H., We’re Almost There! 2008. The topic of “Photography and The City”, is as vast and diverse as the photograph. This photograph was taken from an airplane window this past August as my friend and I were descending on Sydney, Australia. I realize this photograph is not exactly exciting in style, especially artistically. However the subject and even the purpose of why I took such a photograph, makes an interesting discussion for this assignment. With quite a bit of difficulty, I decided to choose this image for numerous reasons; the first being that I felt it really embodied numerous topics that we have discussed throughout this class. This photograph encompasses such topics as, approaching the city as subject of the picturesque, aestheticization of the city environment, the city as the utopia, the rigor of organized urban planning, cultural touchstones (as seen in the Sydney Harbor Bridge), the bird’s-eye view way at looking the city, focus on the architecture with civic honor and pride, the “ideal” city (even the sparkle that was captured in the light reflection off the water), and finally the city without a voice because of the absence of it’s citizens depicted. I also choose this photograph for obviously personal reasons, as mentioned I traveled to the east coast of Australia in August 2008. I’m still very excited about that trip and I knew any of my images from the trip would work well for this assignment because of the numerous topics it embodies. My third reason would be that I have learned many new and interesting sociological aspects behind topics within photography from this class. There are many issues that arise from tourist photography. Capturing a memory can be extended to, exoticising the “other”, to aspects of ownership through a snapshot. I will delve deeper into these three mentioned aspects behind my snapshot, I will entitle “We’re almost there!!” On the personal front I really related to Simone De Beauvoir’s, L’Amerique au jour le jour, when deciding to choose this particular photograph. When reading her journal entries on traveling to the United States, New York City specifically, for the first time I was struck with the similar emotions she so eloquently articulated. In fact, while I was reading her journals, I became very nostalgic for all my previous travels, and the definite excitement as the airplane descends. “We’re almost there!!”, I felt embodied that adrenaline moment when you can open the shade over your window for the first time in a few hours, and there lies a city you have been talking about, researching about and dying in agony to finally visit! De Beauvoir, aside from graciously sharing her feeling and thoughts as she enters the city for the first time, also goes into some detail with the sociological aspects behind New York City. This photograph in particular does not depict any humanistic or sociological traits, due to the fact that it comes from a “bird’s-eye view”. In some ways, the “bird’s-eye view” snapshot truly encapsulates the notion of the “ideal” or “Utopian” city. All that is seen is the general layout of the city, with few cultural landmarks in view, and beyond the frame the vast ocean surrounding Sydney. “We’re almost there!” does not show, Sydney’s citizens, traffic, poverty, garbage, or any other truly defining traits a city embodies. A city’s essence is not how the urban landscape was built, or it’s aestheticism, rather what the city represents to it’s citizens, what kind of place it is to be lived in. In our case it was, what does the city have to offer us, as excited and eager tourists. Our trips main objective was to have an adventure for a few weeks and escape “reality” in a way, while we are young and out of school for the summer. Sydney played an excellent starting point in our east coast Australian adventure, the city offered the best hostel I have ever stayed in, glorious visual stimulation while walking around for eight hours everyday, gorgeous city views of and from the water, Bondi beach, affordable and elegant dinners, a contemporary aboriginal dance performance, a fabulous and interactive exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art, and especially meeting numerous friendly Aussies. After taking “We’re almost there!!”, my level of adrenaline never died down, because this city did not disappoint, at least not in the four action-packed days. My tourist experience may not be felt amongst all other tourists, or Sydney’s very own citizens, however from my short experience within this cities limits, the city was a welcoming and truly satisfying experience and I would feel truly privileged to visit or live there again in my life time. L.H.
Robbie Swan, Explore #35, 2009. The image I have chosen is an appropriated one from the internet (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishswan/329568 6097/). I thought that an appropriated photograph would be easier to place a new view on, a one where the context was already, known especially one taken by myself. Upon first glance of this photo we see something of a tourist attraction with the viewfinder you pay to have a few minutes to have a closer look through at your surroundings. Done almost in a faded sepia tone and the fact that the neighborhood below looks mostly like it comes from about the middle of the 20th century, it almost gives this photo a sense of a false time frame, making it seem older then it actually is. Although a quiet and even almost serene looking photograph, one could look at this quite differently. The city can be seen as a densely packed, monochromatic place where an individual can, whether they intended to or not, blend in, become anonymous. This fact is emphasized by the use of the sepia tone and there not being any individuals (let alone any signs of life) within the picture itself. A cityscape lessens the focus on the individual and often times the structures within the city become either the subject or simply acts as a framing device. While an empty city goes against its original purpose of communal living, one can start to imagine people huddled in their homes or some kind of event that caused the city to appear so empty. The sense of anonymity or invisibility of the individual within the city that this photo creates could be starkly contrasted with the viewfinder that is the central focus of the image. Placed slightly off center in the foreground, we get an object that is used for focusing in on more distant things. Acting like a large microscope, the viewfinder gives the one looking through it the ability to look at individual events and things, and because it is located within a city (instead of say, a scenic hilltop) the viewer can zero in on individuals, and unbeknownst to the ‘view-ee’, temporarily destroy that person’s anonymity within the city. The idea of an unknown viewer seems to fit well with photography, especially nowadays with digital pictures that can be posted online for anyone to see. Within this photo you almost get the feeling of “Big Brother” watching you, like a government organization or some kind of big corporation. With the viewfinder located at a higher vantage point and positioned pointing downwards this feeling seems underlined. It starts to remind me slightly of George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four. The novel tells of a not-to-distant future where individuals have been conformed to think alike and believe only what their government tells them, even though that changes from day to day. People are monitored constantly with hidden microphones and cameras and separated physically in their living and working spaces as well by class and live disconnected lives, as what used to be normal family structures are no longer allowed. When there is someone who breaks from the faceless herd of society and starts thinking and doing things their own way they are erased from existence. While this was probably not the photographer’s original intention with this photograph one can see how simple it is to make your own commentary and draw your own conclusions from a single picture out of context. While it is not always wrong to do so, it certainly makes for interesting discussion, creating many possible stories to go with a single image. C.C.
S.B., Vertical Chicago, 2008. This photograph features a very vertical perspective on a portion of the downtown core of the third-most populous city in the United States. It’s a highly patterned panoramic image of skyscrapers, shorter buildings, roads and cars, with a few small patches of greenery sprinkled throughout the frame. The image is dense, busy and complex, allowing the eye no place to rest and giving the viewer the sense that there is infinite detail to be discovered if one looks closely. The mosaic of squares, lines, angles and sharp geometric shapes could be compared with a Piet Mondrian composition or with the title sequence to Hitchcock’s North by Northwest; though both examples employ bright primary and secondary colours, whereas this photo is a medley of grey and tertiary tones. The almost monotone palette of the photograph gives it a slightly bleak and melancholy tone, contributing to the overall impression of the city as rational but perhaps dull and vapid. Like the aforementioned Hitchcock and Mondrian examples, this photo is nearly devoid of organic and round forms; and therein it epitomizes the popular metaphor of the city as a machine – the movement of vehicles and people mechanically prescribed and strictly restricted by roads and traffic lights. Furthermore, the absence of people and the lack of movement in the image (except for a few vehicles turning at intersections) underline this representation of the city as a controlled environment dominated by machines, concrete, steel and glass. Because there are no people visible from this height, the city is completely depersonalized, dehumanized, and anonymous. It is a grey, cement-shaped, orderly machine, in which skyscrapers top the visual hierarchy, both literally and symbolically. The skyscrapers not only dwarf the streets, the vehicles and the inhabitants of the city, but they also dominate the one church that is clearly visible in this shot. It is situated in the lower centre-right portion of the frame and is distinguished by its peaked roof and spire. The small visual presence of the church within the shot reflects the fact that the skyscraper has overtaken religious buildings in many modern Western cities, including this one, as the central icon of urban architecture. The high vantage point and downward gaze of the photograph is reminiscent of Tullio Crali’s Diving over the City (1936). This bird’s eye perspective is far removed from the eye-level experience of the city, with its raucous traffic, bustling commuters, hot dog vendors, street musicians and so on. The clutter, chaos, multiplicity and human scale of the groundlevel view are not visible from the camera’s perch, one hundred storeys above. In Grand Style Urban Photography Peter B. Hales contends that panoramas such as this one serve to “civilize the city and make it comprehensible,” a statement clearly demonstrated by this photograph of Chicago. Similarly, in Gazing at the Metropolis Renzo Dubbini contends the degree of detachment offered by an “elevated viewpoint” is necessary in order to grasp the dynamic reality of the city. My instinct in choosing this vantage point was indeed along these lines. Like so many other tourists and panorama photographers, my aim was to get as high above the city as possible in order to encapsulate the public space within this commercial district with the map-like objectivity of a long shot. The photograph was to serve as a souvenir of my time in the city, and therein I used the camera to relieve me of the “burden of memory,” as John Berger phrases it in Uses of Photography. S.B.
C.P., Feral Rock Pigeon, Ottawa, 2009. This photograph was taken near Hartman’s Grocer at the corner of Somerset and Bank streets in Ottawa, January 2009. It was taken using a Canon G10 using a macro focus. The image is a portrait study of a feral Rock Pigeon, and a few of its brethren around the border. What struck me most about this particular photograph were the uniformity of the pigeon’s plumage, as well as the expressiveness of its head. The beak appears withdrawn, sunken and resigned. I felt this image was also special because of the emotion that the pigeon’s eye appears to convey. I feel that the vantage point offers the viewer a way to see the pigeon as she or he otherwise likely would not. I also believe that the subject subtly reinforces the Dickensian view of the city as a corrupting influence. It also calls to mind Garry Winogrand’s notion of the “disease that modern life has wrought.” Yet I feel that these ideas are subjective, and the image can be simply appreciated on its own as spectacle. Most of all, I feel that this image successfully translates the idea of the city without revealing any cityscape whatsoever. I believe that the symbolic power vested in the feral Rock Pigeon is enough for anyone acquainted with a reasonable large urban metropolis to be reminded of such when confronted with this bird, more so than any other animal. A history of the Rock Pigeon yields a deeper social critique. This particular breed of Columbidae had developed when the domestic pigeon has escaped into the concrete jungle that is the city. I think an amiable aspersion to homeless persons is drawn this way. These pigeons, evidently, are transient creatures. That I was able to approach and capture an image of one of them so clearly makes me believe I have found a Bressonian “decisive moment.” I also think that the ambiguity of place in the photograph lends it strength; the right word would be ubiquity. I appreciate the notion that this could be your city; the only real determinant is of climate. Another of my inspirations for this photo was Jacob Riis, whose social photography during 1890s industrial New York still prompts debate of the ethics of documenting the lower classes. I felt that I was able to convey the same sentiment that exposure and awareness of poverty is a necessity for a healthy social demographic in the city, while side-stepping the issue of explicitness. On the other hand, such non-specificity can be detrimental to the cause. In summary, this photo is partly the coalescence of a great deal of thinking about the ways in which many different photographers combined the utility of the camera with its potential for unearthing beauty and awareness of the world in ways that our vantage point – whether physical socio-political – is not germane to. Whatever your belief, I believe this photo is worthy of one’s contemplation, and a success for its candidness and ability to invoke the idea of the city without directly showing it. C.P.
M.G., Warsaw, Poland, n.d. “Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.” -Henri Cartier-Bresson
Ariadne Van de Ven writes about the ethics of photographing people when travelling to other countries. She expresses concern with the method in which tourists photograph a foreign country’s people. While these concerns are absolutely valid, I tend to think there is an underlying assumption that tourists are ethically dysfunctional; that their objective is to photograph “the other” and assert themselves as “the normal” in an intended or unintended by-product. This dangerous assumption brings about an array of issues ranging from the semantics argument on ‘capturing’ the image (or ‘taking’ a picture) of a person to the ethics of photographing a stranger for the sake of collecting and categorizing. I have chosen this picture of Warsaw that I have taken myself because it includes elements that writers and theorists have argued are unethical and that I consider to be innocuous. Yes, I am a tourist and yes, I have taken a photograph of complete strangers in a foreign country. Does this make my photograph any less ethical than a photograph, say, a mother takes of her child sitting on a shopping mall Santa Clause’s knee while tears stream down her terrified face? Is the Santa photo ethical because the photographer knows her subject? What are the boundaries in question? In this photograph, we can see all kinds of culturally unique elements that were included as a means to present my experiences and the knowledge I had gained to my friends and family at home. This exercise of photographing the city and its inhabitants was an attempt to share information and try to situate the experience in a physical geographic place for those viewers who may not have been where I had been. This photograph contains two children selling roses to tourists on the restaurant patio (bottom left), colourful tall European houses, a cobblestone piazza, patio umbrellas advertising a locally brewed Polish beer, the top part of the Mermaid statue in the middle of the square (a Polish tradition wherein all cities have a legend. Warsaw’s legend is based on this mermaid); local merchants and shoppers, and tourists. We can also see the fair weather conditions of that day, assume the temperature is warm because of the tropical-looking plants that line the patios, we see the sun hitting the buildings and half of the market square, and how popular this public space is, but the photograph is not just about the people and the plants and the stone. It is about the feeling, the moment in time when I was there. As in the quotation at the beginning of this commentary, I was seeking to capture the “whole essence” of the scene. I was not attempting to marginalize the locals or place a frame of dissimilarity around them. I simply wanted to capture the moment, the culture and the energy of my travels. I did not have an ulterior motive; I did not take photographs to show how differently Polish people live, work and play. I took the photograph to remember the place and time and to share that experience with others. It is my souvenir. M.G.
L.S., Tenement, 2006. This is a photo from a trip to New York City that I took with my parents in August 2006. We were walking around Greenwich Village when I snapped this shot at the back of building, with a man sunning himself on the fire escape and another rifling through a dumpster of wood. At the time, I didn’t think twice about taking this picture; I wanted to represent the “real” New York. Yet after taking this course, I’ve come to the realization that there is no such thing as the “real” anything, especially when it comes to photography and the city. Firstly, this image calls to mind the work of Hans Haacke, who took pictures of New York tenements in Shapolsky et al., Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, 1971, and then captioned the photos with real estate ownership from MOMA members. In doing so, Haacke exposed the socio-economic relationship between art and subject, something that cuts to the core of my photo. The relationship between subject and photographer is inherently questioned: who am I to take this photo, who are the people in it, and why did I take it? It is the iconic image perhaps of what Sontag would call “observed abnormality”, or Jacob Riis’s “How the Other Half Lives”. I want to see the New York City I don’t know, and from my middle class perspective. But in essence it is an icon of an image, and not the reality itself. The view of city as dystopia, of new ways of living in the city—be it on a fire escape and a dumpster—are examined here, and from an outsider’s viewpoint, i.e. mine. This is abnormality for me, but perhaps not for the subjects themselves. In developing this idea of subject and photographer, this photo also says something about the viewer. It assumes this is an image, an icon of reality, that the viewer is not familiar with (and similarly, why the title “How the Other Half Lives” also makes an assumption about who the “other”, other half is.) As with Diane Arbus, who photographed the marginal, this photo assumes the viewer has not seen this image before, or at the very least would be interested in it. Would people who grew up in these apartments care to see my photo as much as those who find such images iconic and foreign? The camera cropping, as Sontag called it and to which I referred to earlier, also captures the sense of spontaneity to this photo. It is true that I stumbled across this scene, not having planned on taking such a photograph, but in doing so I did not accurately portray the context of the image either. It is hard to place in the city; we don’t know if the building is tall, in a crowded neighbourhood, and what other kinds of people exist in this space. When we talked in class about the “iconic” images of the U.S. (or any place we travel, for that matter), this is not the typical photo of New York. Yet in a way, I felt that it represented reality more than, say, the Statue of Liberty. As Sontag discusses in On Photography and in our discussion of Robert Frank’s The Americans, there is a degree of irony and even hopelessness in some of the best—and truest—photographs of the U.S., be that on the Western landscape or in the city itself. Though this photo does call into question the relationship between portrait and subject, as well as the degree to which the photographer is accurately reflecting the “reality” of the situation, is does emote a feeling that this is not a posed or picturesque photo of the city. L.S.
K.L., Habana, n.d. The photograph that I have chosen was taken during a tour to Habana in Cuba. It is not a photograph taken in the actual city but from a bridge that is used to enter city. For me, this photograph represents the impression I get for the feel of Habana as a city. Before visiting Habana, I had a basic expectation – lots of culture and the thriving city of Habana as an interesting and busy place. After visiting Habana, my expectations proved to be accurate; I realized that this photograph exemplifies what the city of Habana is: the market in Habana involves more than the vendors and shoppers, it is where residents and visitors go to experience a city within itself. To prove this point further, on the tour I learned that Cuba is a country (and Habana as its capital city) supported mainly by tourism. As in this photograph, many of Habana’s inhabitants are in the streets daily selling anything from their own photographs, portraits of tourists on the spot or peanuts in order to attract tourists and allow their business to be a personal success. Hence the market. On the tour that I took of Habana there was a choice to spend more time in the market or to go to a museum; only five people out of the entire tour group chose to go to the museum as they wanted to see the city within itself. The main factor about this photograph is that it shows that the city is constantly growing and changing (a kind of organism) – the city of Habana functions and develops from what is depicted in this photograph. The market is overall a social space; it contains people and businesses, all interacting with one another. The market functions as an independent city from the larger one. The fact that tourists pay to see it as opposed to other parts of the larger city showcases this, they want an escape from the greater, larger city. This may be because the larger city has too much to take in all at once, whereas this small market is a representation of the space that it is in. This photograph is a small but good taste of what the city really holds. This small market functions as a smaller city also because of its location; it is surrounded by fields and down a set of stairs. Really, this city is to be seen by those who are interested by having to go down stairs, it is as if you are entering the smaller city because you choose to see what it holds further once having looked at it from a distance. Overall, this photograph’s subject (the market) is entered upon invitation and the desire to see what the invitation is offering. There are many ideas that arise because this market is separated from the larger city. The visitors to the market are looking at things on tables as opposed to their surroundings showing the market as an environment that can bring you in. What is quite interesting about the photograph is not only the focus of the small market, but what photograph showcases: the functioning city. Across the bay is the city of Habana, recognizable by its buildings. The separation of different spaces (big city and small city) is created by the wall that blocks a part of the horizon; the entire horizontal view of the actual city of Habana. This allows this small market to become a kind of utopia, an escape from the reality of the larger city. It is a different environment from the larger city, a detachment from the urban qualities (i.e. transportation) of the city. Overall, this photograph shows that the small market thrives on tourism, just like the larger economy of the city of Habana does. People can go here to sample one of the main attractions of the larger city. This photograph is a focused environment with no distractions. It offers a choice to its viewer, whether or not to enter the larger city seen across the bay or to explore this one more. K.L.
J.P., Ottawa at Night, n.d. The inspiration for this photograph comes from a poem by Aaron Clark titled Ottawa at Night. In the poem, the speaker situates himself in downtown Ottawa, envisioning himself as a gargoyle that watches over the city. Here in the city at night, the speaker imagines the tall buildings as giants sleeping under a blanket of asphalt. The buildings themselves are the tall shoulders of these titans lying on their sides. This poem presents the city in terms of the mythic. It proposes that the city itself is alive and the structures that we create become characters of their own.
Ottawa at Night by Aaron Clark The city is full Of sighing Giants All rolling Over In their sleep
The photograph that I have taken depicts a street in downtown Ottawa in the central business district. This area of the city is filled with monolithic structures that we have created and imbued with life, which now sit, breathing, living beings, forming our cities. The city is a machine which we have built but no longer control. We have built beings which require little care from us for their sustenance. The air passes through the lungs of our buildings on preset timers, feeding fresh air and preventing disease to the cells of the monoliths. We move through the buildings acting as part of the organism, no longer its creators but cogs in the wheels that keep it functioning.
And I dressed Like a gargoyle Sit Nestled in their Shoulders Covering my ears From Their moans
When walking the city streets at night I like to imagine these monolithic structures as sleeping giants and imbue them with the mythic qualities of the Golem, in that they are larger than life creations that are brought into existence by human hands. In our modern day, the mythic are no longer considered relevant or plausible. We forget that it was first our imagination that we used to conceive these giant structures. The older buildings such as Parliament are covered in gargoyles to reflect the epic nature of the land and the beliefs in the supernatural of the people who created them. Our modern structures no longer reflect these epic qualities but rise in shining glass and steel as symbols of our progress beyond these beliefs. I would like to imagine these buildings defying the form and meaning of their creators and existing in their own mythic light as sleeping giants. These
As the empty Streets Mirror The open night I write one more Word For the cold And vacant Concrete
But their burned And broken Down Collarbones Can no longer Hold My stories
monolithic glass and steel structures breathe and dream of things beyond the workings of the office towers. They allow us to see the power of such progress, but magic can emerge in even the most mechanical and scientific creations. These structures also allow us to realize the immensity of our creations and our own smallness in their stead. I tried to capture the immensity of these structures using photography by choosing a location that exemplified the towering heights on all sides of me. I chose an area where I felt eclipsed by the buildings and was unable to entirely frame them in the lens, where the buildings extended past the confines of my photograph. By choosing a low vantage point I was showing us as a submissive, small force in comparison to the city, whereas had I chosen a high vantage point the viewer would have been given a sense of domination or ownership over the city. My intent was to capture the epic qualities of the city both as machine and as mythic creation. We have forgotten our superstitions and beliefs in magic and the supernatural in this society, but seeing the buildings as the jutting shoulders of the giants emerging from the concrete allows us for a brief moment to return to a time when magic was believed to be all around. J.P.
E.J., The Process of Flying, n.d. When you enter terminal one at the Toronto Pearson International Airport, the first thing you feel is dwarfed. Towering pillars capped with giant yellow letters stretch above travellers, waiting anxiously in lines below. The space is filled with white light, polished floors and heavy beams. An omnipresent, calm voice warns against leaving bags unattended. The space feels inhuman, cold and uncomfortable. In the series of photographs titled “The Process of Flying”, the airport is depicted as sterile, inhuman and threatening. The photos use very little colour and the only penetrating reds and yellows share a harsh, artificial quality. These photos stand in contrast with a series of people-oriented airport portraits by Garry Winogrand called “Arrivals and Departures”. Instead of highlighting the colourful personalities often found in airports, as Winogrand did, here individuals appear as dark, almost unintelligible shadows. Tearful goodbyes and joyous greetings are left out – the focus is strictly on the airport as a system or machine. These photos were taken during a trip from Toronto to Vancouver. The first photo shows the shiny new terminal at the Toronto airport, accompanied by three photos taken at the Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport. Together, the photos create a continuous narrative about the increase in security, conformity and loss of individuality in airports over the last decade. Since September 11, 2001, the experience of travel has changed significantly. From first packing your luggage (“Remember, any gels and liquids go in their own sealed bags”) to the pass through security (“Kindly take off your shoes, belts and jacket”), every traveller is now considered a suspect. Moving through an airport is no longer a cause for celebration or relaxation. Instead, it has become a process of identifying yourself clearly and proving you have nothing to hide. These photos highlight the futuristic and intimidating dystopia of today’s airport. In the face of constant surveillance and new technology, it’s difficult to shake the “Big Brother is watching” feeling in Toronto’s newest terminal. As in the 1927 science fiction film Metropolis, technology appears as the cause of our dehumanization in these photos. The airport itself is an interesting representation of the city in motion. Community members in this mock-city are transient and ever-changing. Life isn’t about relating to one another face-to-face, but instead depending on our phones and computers to maintain constant contact with our friends, families and coworkers outside of the airport walls. Life in the airport is orderly and anonymous, silent and temporary. This idea of the empty, emotionless city is emphasized in the photos by the lack of colour, the rigid horizontal and vertical lines and the focus on the mechanism of the airport rather than on individual travellers. These four photos create a visual narrative that frames the airport as an inhuman machine and emphasizes the abstracted, surreal qualities of the space. For example, in the third image, direction becomes merely a system of letters and numbers that are meaningless if taken outside of the airport context. In the final, most poignant image, the idea of family is simplified in an illuminated bathroom sign. Any indication of the diversity of families travelling through the airport is lost in this representation and the stylized family becomes only a symbol for the real thing, as understood by a specific culture. In airports since September 11, many travellers have been wrongly stereotyped based on their ethnicity. Here, the symbolic family, appropriately dressed and delineated in the traditional Western sense, leaves little room for cultural difference. Overall, these photos examine the nature of airport space, while making a greater comment on urban centres. The airport is presented as a metaphor for the city and what the city could become (inhuman, anonymous, sterile, intimidating) if we continue to abandon personality, culture and privacy in exchange for new technologies and increased security. In The Process of Flying, the inhuman quality of airports is emphasized, down to the very title of the work, as even the concept of flight has more to do with the machine than it does with human nature. E.J.
K.M., Notre Dame Basilica, 2009. Recently, a friend and I took a trip to Montreal for a weekend. We spent most of our time on St. Catherine Street downtown but on our last day we ventured out to Old Montreal in search of the Pointe-à-Callière Archeology Museum. As we walked up the cobblestone streets, I looked up and was overwhelmed by the colossal church that stood before me. Only the left side was visible but I was so moved that I felt obligated to take a picture. I felt inspired and even captivated by the scene before me which made me think of the city as a muse. The church in question is the Notre Dame Basilica on the Rue St. Jacques in Montreal. The photograph was taken at dusk as I walked up a small hill. The lamp posts, the street signs and the church are all emblematic of an older time filled with rich culture and what I feel would have been a higher form of society. Hints of modern life fill the picture as well, as the cars stop at a traffic light and the high-rise building looms over the left side of the scene. All of the street signs in this area reflect the church’s influence on society. The sign in the foreground reads “Fortifications” while the sign in the middle ground is less clear but it does read “rue St. Jacques”. I also found it interesting that as you walk up the hill towards the church you symbolically walk towards the light or towards the divine. This was one of the reasons I captured this photograph because while the sky in the background at this time of day is a pale blue, it fades almost to white which I felt could be a metaphor for the pure, white light of God. I am not a very religious person but I find it difficult not to feel a sense of serenity or divinity as I look at this photograph. It represents the idea that through all the hustle and bustle of the modern day, there are still traces of a higher power looking over the city. The space I’ve chosen to include in this photograph is slightly distorted. My analysis focuses mostly on the church yet in this photograph only a small portion of it is visible. I was so moved by the church that I did, in fact, take a picture of it by itself yet I felt more inspired by this photograph as it encompasses more aspects of the city. It documents the life outside the sacred walls of the Notre Dame Basilica but still reveals the presence of its influential power over the scene. Actually, I find this to be a rather utopian view of Montreal. When one thinks of Montreal, more often than not its downtown region is the first thing to come to mind; St. Catherine Street in particular. It’s so busy and crowded and has more strip clubs on one street than ever thought possible yet only a few Metro stops away is this calm and serene area of Montreal that is a complete turn-around from its busy, downtown counterpart. This photograph is, therefore evidential proof that there is still room for culture and spirituality in the modern city. K.M.
A.C., Waterloo Station, London, 2008. This is a photograph I took under Waterloo Station in London, England, on a trip I made there in June of 2008. The graffiti extended along the entire wall to the right of the picture and down an alleyway that looked as though it was rarely used by vehicles. I am sure this tunnel area would be a dangerous place to be alone at night, however during the day when I was there it seemed as though other tourists were happening upon it just as I was. Waterloo Station is located in South London, long known as a rough part of the city. Some tags in my picture include: a Nintendo symbol that instead says “mind control”, a storm trooper from Star Wars, phallic symbols in the shape of rockets, the phrase “mutoid waste” sprayed on a light fixture, tags of various political leaders and of course, the quintessential anarchy symbol. The black and white graffiti wrapping around the bottom of the right-side wall is of a cityscape with buildings piled one on top of the other. As the subject of my photograph is graffiti and there are no people in it, I would like to use it here as documentation, rather than a personal memory of my vacation. What I did not realize at the time was that this large graffiti display could have been in conjunction with a show at the Tate Modern, called Street Art, which ran from May 23rd until August 25th of last year. Certainly, that day I was on my way to the Tate Modern. Various talks were held at the Tate throughout the summer that involved such topics as the street as a public performance space and graffiti as a utopian/dystopian strategy. I chose this photograph out of the series I took because it seemed aesthetically pleasing in its composition and contains the most graffiti symbols. The pole bisects the picture and there is marked contrast between the shadowed area of the tunnel in the upper right and the lighter area of the sun-exposed lower left half. The boarded up alleyway in the far corner also represents the botched authority of the bureaucracy that could not guard this entranceway and the concept of the dystopia in the run-down city. In terms of a picturesque or portrait view, this photograph is a picturesque view, as it is devoid of any people. If it contained someone actually painting the graffiti, this would completely change how the photograph was viewed. It could then be used as a piece of evidence to condemn someone for vandalism; or the photograph could become an action shot, perhaps used by the artist for their reputation and personal distribution. Graffiti art is a subject that lends itself to the subject of our February 24th class: Contested Spaces. Obviously since its inception, graffiti on private and publicly owned buildings within cities has faced scrutiny. While many do tout themselves as actual graffiti artists, others use graffiti to spite certain people and groups. The featured photograph is definitely a product of the former group of individuals. Graffiti art can definitely be classified as public art, and our readings from February 24th cover two such artists concerned with art that can have an “edifying effect on the public” (Burnham 1975, 139), namely artists Hans Haacke and Krzystof Wodiczko. The article about Hans Haacke, Steps in the Formulation of Real-Time Political Art, outlines this artist’s struggle and dialogue with the contemporary gallery setting versus the street as the prime showcase for his work; this struggle is analogous with the rising popularity of street art. When Wodiczko makes his projections onto monuments he says he is appropriating the building not to add this desired life and social function, but to bring attention to the violence of war and politics, what the monument truly represents (Wodiczko 1986, 5). Certainly the graffiti in my photograph is trying to make a political and social statement, literally highlighting the anarchy underlying social structures and institutions by aligning tags of Star Wars storm troopers with images of Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush. A.C.
K.H., Keeper, 2006. Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan have both explored the moment that is unrepeatable; that moment of punctum or tuché; which is beyond the real, beyond reach. It is a moment in time, but what is remarkable in this photograph is that it is wholly the children’s moment. These three children are entirely focussed in their moment at the exclusion of all else. Gazing at this photograph is an indulgence and a guilty pleasure - because as adults we no longer have the capacity to be entirely absorbed in the task at hand. The result is we are staring at them - eliciting questions of public space and private place. They are private in their instant in a public arena. Some clues are inescapable. The environment is clearly urban. The tufts of green grass poking through the paving stones remind us of that. The type of ice-cream is clearly soft, suggesting Dairy Queen. The red and blue are corporate identifiers for D.Q. yet which Dairy Queen and where it is are not discernable. It does not matter. The primary blue and red in this photograph and the expanse of white describes a horizon line suggesting the formality found in a landscape photograph or painting; compositionally the rhythm and the visible formal aspects of line and colour make it an exceptional photograph. One cannot look at these three children as a group. The boy is visually very separate from the girls, who exhibit a familiarity in both relationship and appearance that declare they must be sisters. That the girl in the middle has her back turned to the boy pushes him visually farther away. The space between the girls and the boy is a negative space architecturally enhanced by the bench and the horizon. The crop of the photograph emphasizes the stretched horizontal plane and visually lengthens the distance between the girls and the boy. Because of the slope of the walkway it appears as if the bench is crooked (which is also aided by the painted blue bracket anchoring the bench to the wall), with the weight of the girls putting it off kilter. That the boy’s feet do not touch the ground, re-enforces the illusion because the girls are grounded, sharing ice cream and therefore connected to each other and disconnected from him - their apparent weight combining to unbalance the image. The boy is placed at the centre of the right half of the picture and the two girls are sitting at the extreme end of the bench near the edge of the left half of the photograph, strengthening the visual imbalance. The girls’ heads remain below the red horizon line, while his, pokes up into the white “sky.” The pink and white accents on the girls’ outfits situate them in the foreground of the picture plane while he in red and brown recedes into the background. What makes Keeper work is the connection with things past. It evokes both Norman Rockwell and Paul Peel eliciting feelings of guilty pleasure; looking at children enjoying ‘ice scream’ and evoking nostalgia for days when you could just eat it at the exclusion of all else. It is about childhood and the intensity of the moment (note the boy’s smile and rapturous concentration) and yet at the same time it is about the fleeting aspect of those moments. It is summer in Ottawa 2006, outside of a Dairy Queen on Merivale Road. We have travelled to Ottawa to be with my husband, who is designing a show for Odyssey Theatre. We have just come from a family outing to the Victoria Museum of Nature with my parents, who have driven up to see us from Stratford. Having lived in Newfoundland for the last ten years we are not accustomed to the heat of an Ottawa summer so we bribe the children, who were getting cranky, with D.Q. Joshua is sitting on the right looking like he is separate from his sisters, but in reality it was because that was the nearest spot to the counter for him to sit and dig in. (Chocolate and ice cream are his favourite things.) Anna is perched on the very end of the bench and her sister Sarah, wearing white (what was I thinking?), is uncharacteristically trying to share her ice cream with her big sister. It is still my desktop image even though it was taken almost three years ago.
D.D. Two Gypsies, n.d. Two gypsies stand frozen amid the ever-rushing current of the city. In a city like Florence, even the beggars are picturesque. “Signore, signore! Tre bambini, signore!” they moan after tourists as they enter the Duomo. Dressed in colourful skirts with long, stringy hair, the Romani women look as though they’ve stepped out of a Victor Hugo period novel. Their normally vigilant attention is currently transfixed upon the take-away dish of spaghetti they devour together. Savouring each strand, the dark haired woman pulls each noodle apart with her fingers, raises it in the air and it quickly disappears. The fair-haired woman is so advanced in her pregnancy one imagines her baby in her belly is relishing this treat as much as the mother. The modern tourist gaze seeks out the picturesque through street photography. In this image, like a modern, twisted Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, the women dine on a simple meal amid other figures. But, unlike Manet’s painting, this picnic occurs on their tired feet, amid the past and present reverberations in the moving, modern city. The buggy in motion and the horse’s ears nearly out of view lead the viewer back to an older, quieter time, or at least an earlier method of locomotion. These objects act as an anchor, holding the Romani in Florence and corroborating their way of life. This photograph was taken in a series shot on the steps of the Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore. I was waiting for a friend who never arrived and looking out at the people on the square in front of the Baptistery. Members of the Hare Krishna were chanting and playing instruments on bicycles. Other Romani women and children were walking through the square, asking people for money. Then time slowed down and I spied these two women sharing a meal off to the side. Sunny breaks in the clouds made the jewel tones of their skirts sparkle all the more. By digitally increasing the exposure and dramatically heightening the colour contrast the beauty of the Romani clothing becomes the focal point. It is an exciting feeling, to capture a moment that was secret but that you can share. I think this is a precious moment, as worthy of aesthetic appreciation as an oil painting with posed models. Their bursting, pregnant bellies and high-heeled feet are incredibly disjunctive with the image of the Ottawa-area yoga mom we are most familiar with. As Ariadne Van de Ven has described, “both the making and the viewing of photographs can challenge our responses to ‘otherness’” (Van de Ven 2008, 388). These women are fierce, and yet they relish in this delicious meal like two young children. The image is indeed picturesque, and the intense colours and patterns in the subjects’ clothing create a stark contrast to the blue denim appearance of the transient figure out of focus. The majority of European citizens view the Romani people as a menace and many others still imagine the Romani as an archaic culture that no longer exists in modern society. But since the 14th century, when the Romani presence in Europe was first recorded, the Romani people have struggled to maintain their vibrant culture. Once synonymous with fortunetellers and caravan-riders, gypsies, or Romani have their own musical as well as other traditions. In this image, though, the viewer is drawn to the kinship bond that unites these women. In the fast moving city, where all others are dressed in contemporary clothing, these two women are emplaced within the larger Italo-cultural paradigm. They maneuver system of the city at large. No doubt, these two women were married very young and have likely already had several children. The more children you bear, the higher your status in the Romani community. But they are not confined to the home. These women are out in the city, with little care for their outward perception by others. But their lives are not so idyllic, as the tourist photographer has surely noted. The Italian government has at times referred to the Romani population in Italy as a “Roma emergency” harkening back to earlier times of persecution and violence (Povoledo 2008). There are instances of prejudice and violence against the Romani even today. Perceptions of the Romani as thieves and beggars are grossly out of touch with the face of modern Romani communities. Ought the Romani women to be regarded as any more anachronistic than the horse and buggy in the background of this very image? D.D.
L. Beaubien-Ellis, Tramway, San Francisco, 1983. A candid picture taken during a trip to San Francisco in 1983 by a young medical student represented for her the last summer of freedom before entering the workforce. A trip to fulfill a dream to visit the city, the photographer said she was happy to travel alone. Just as Simone de Beauvoir set out in the1940s from Paris to New York City and recorded her thoughts in America Day by Day, my mother illustrated her adventure to another country and city through pictures. The photograph was taken during a tramway drive through the city. My mother says she dangled off one pole. The picture is not centered on the tramway driver from whom we can only see the hands and face partially covered by sunglasses working the controls. Rather, it centers on a young couple leaning out of the tramway, capturing a moment of excitement from the young man’s face as the wind rushes past them, and subsequently the city landscape. Ironically, they are leaning directly under a sign stating, “Danger. No Leaning out.” Though the picture does not depict the city itself, it does suggest the theme of the ‘city as portrait subject’, or rather the people within it. City dwellers create an organic landscape in city, arousing the curiosity of visitors and answering the question: Who lives here? The photographer allows the viewer to explore even further the tourist aspect of a city, and the ‘city as dream destination.’ No longer do people simply visit landmarks, they travel to immerse themselves in the culture itself, becoming part of the masses, if even for only a short while. In this candid tourist picture, the photographer has immersed herself in the city, becoming a lens watching the other tourists around her. She is no longer one of them, but not a city dweller either. The picture also explores the idea of the ‘city as a system of systems.’ In the article, “The City in Photography” by Graham Clark, he states, “The city remains an enigma. As a photograph, it is an endless source of imagery; as an experience, it is endlessly complex and ambivalent...The city is both real and surreal. It continually challenges the eye of the camera as to how it is to respond, and always remains ambiguous.” (92, 97) Thus, the city is an ambiguous subject, where the camera limits the frame through which we can ascertain its identity. A city is, I believe, an organic thing. It lives, it breathes and it grows. This is due simply and point of factly, to the people that live within it. When outsiders visit, they take away their own feelings and thoughts. Some may be like Simone de Beauvoir, who left American shores with a feeling of disillusionment after leaving a racist and dreamlike New York, to the sense of accomplishment and pride of my mother who saved enough money to travel by herself to San Francisco, and fulfill a wish to see the beautiful West Coast city. She still speaks of her trip to this day, every time one of her three kids digs out her album, encasing memories of her youth and a far away city. K.E.
G.H., Blanc Nature, 2001. This photograph using colour film was taken in 2001 by the photographer before he had heard of Eugène Atget or seen any of his historical photographs of Paris, in fact it was also taken before he started his BA in Art History at Carleton University. Let’s start by taking an aesthetic modern approach to interpreting the image depicted in Blanc Nature. The photograph of a shop window is attractive in itself, and in fact, the photographer took the picture because he was attracted by the display in the window of three women’s tailored white shirts, the way they were displayed, and by the framing provided by the window and part of the front of the store. Now revisiting this photograph one notes some further detail. First, we can see a little into the shop itself and see some tailored women’s jackets, it looks like three of them, a third of the way down the photograph and above and partially obscured by the name of the store, Blanc Nature, written in a cursive style on the store’s window. Secondly, we see a just visible reflected image of the other side of the street, so that we can intuit that this is a shop in a fairly narrow street with likely other high-end or de luxe shopping venues nearby. The year is 2001 and the photographer was on a week’s holiday staying with friends near the Bois de Boulogne, and this is a small shopping area that he and his wife passed each day walking to or from art galleries and museums displaying impressionist works. The photograph is taken from just to the right of the store likely so that no signature reflection of the photographer be seen and so he was safe from busy traffic. Now with the benefit of taken art history courses and viewing art and photography exhibitions, especially at the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), I see a striking similarity with the work of Christopher Pratt brought out by comments of an “Enquiring Eye Guide” at the NGC, Claude Dupuis. He pointed out that many of Christopher Pratt’s paintings were a combination of abstract and realistic depiction. Pratt displayed for example parallel siding on houses with windows viewed squarely from in front. (See for example, Christopher Pratt’s Front Room, 1974; Good Friday, 1973; and Sunday Afternoon, 1972.) It seems to me this effect is also caught by the parallel louvers underlining the window and by the window’s frame itself. However we cannot leave this depiction without making some comparisons with the thousands of photographs taken by Eugène Atget “working in all the old streets of Old Paris to make a collection of 18 x 24 cm negatives: artistic documents of beautiful urban architecture from the 16th to the 19th centuries …. “ (Phillips 1985, 72) as well as of the itinerant peddlers of goods, shops and other evidence of contemporary life in Paris. One well known photograph of his comes particularly to mind, namely, Boulevard de Strasbourg, Corsets, 1912. In fact, “… the Boulevard de Strasbourg [is] a product of Napoleon III’s [Baron Haussmann’s] reconstruction of Paris, and was opened in 1852” (Borcoman 1984, 117). Some commentators, such as James Borcoman, note the “theatrical setting … [and] … erotic fashions” (Borcoman 1984, 117). However, while I can agree with the ‘theatrical setting’ the ‘erotic fashions’ seems to me in this day and age to be a bit excessive. It may be worth noting that Boulevard de Strasbourg, Corsets was subsequently co-opted by the Surrealists. How do the motivations of the photographer of Blanc Nature and of Atget compare? Atget, as noted above, was recording historical ‘Old Paris’ before it disappeared in the face of progress and development, and sold his photographs to “visual artists, craftsmen, and collectors of documents about Old Paris” (Szarkowski 1981, vol. 2, 16). He had the motivation of practising his profession, recording what he loved, and making a living. The photographer of Blanc Nature was solely motivated by seeing what was a framed artistic display and recording it as a memento of his holiday as well as an image, a synecdoche, that conjures up associations of Paris as a city where women take particular care to sport striking fashions and the marvel that Paris is as a place to live, work and enjoy its culture. So we capture the essence of a city by capturing an image of a part. We have the structure of the city, its social and economic life, reflected in what can be attained with success. G.H.
Vanessa McCutcheon, Untitled, n.d. This image is of the downtown Market in Ottawa. It is titled Untitled and is by Ottawa photographer Vanessa McCutcheon. The image feeds into the topics talked about in class as it is both a photograph and its theme is of the city. A historical parallel than exists in photography is Le Boulevard du Temple by Daguerre. The similarities are mainly the relative long exposure times. The daguerreotype was exposed for about ten to twenty minutes and the digital image was a sevenminute exposure. Le Boulevard du Temple has two spectral people blurred to the long exposure time: a shoe shiner and his client, and Untitled has parked cars and ethereal lights of other cars moving pasted over the exposure time. Both images exclude people, and creepy still-like feeling construct the city as an unpopulated area, in the economic and tourist centre of town. Both image remove the daily usage of the space, and ignore the fact that these are living cities. Untitled is of the economic centre of Ottawa, and in class we discussed the city as a place of business. Workers go in the mornings, go to work downtown, and leave, at the end of the day, to go home to the suburbs. This nine to five city usage declares that those present in district after a certain time are up to no good, and this inkling adds to the “dirty” factor and “danger” factor of a downtown core of a main metropolis. Untitled with its long exposure time and lack of people creates many links it to the topic of the “deserted” city that was also talked about in class. The missing people show the city as a well-oiled machine, and declare that people are irrelevant. The Marxist and socialist reading of the working class and the city can also be placed upon the image and ties nicely to the film Metropolis. Where are the workers in this image? Are they underground, as predicted in the film? Often with images of cities, particularly Paris, London and New York, idyllic photos are taken, usually of landmarks, which demonstrate to the world what the city looks like. One may see the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, or the New York City skyline and know what they are looking at. Of Ottawa, the Market is of similar stature – the War Memorial or the Parliament Buildings are more internationally known icons – but when tourists visit Ottawa, the Market is a must-do stop. The commercial and Canadian flair it has is evident in the image. The pavilion, complete with three visible Canadian flags, and the Fish Market Restaurant are well known. The “street as muse” is also a theme in this image; the beauty of the historic Market is exposed through the lights, how they act as accents and highlight the sites of the core. The flashy awnings direct tourists where to look, where to eat, where to shop, and welcome those who walk by to go in and make themselves more comfortable. The private and the public spaces of the city are not really contested in this image. It is obviously in a public space, no homes, or people are present. In this public space, the photographer’s voice is shown as the lines of the photograph show the diagonals, and the lights on the street highlight the beautiful parts of the downtown, while the shadows of dark expose, once again, expose the “danger and dirt” but also add much mystery to the city. The identity of the city can be taken from Untitled, and the image, taken from a vantage point, also ties itself to the city layout maps we saw in class. The streets intersect in a visible fashion, and the lights from missing cars show the streets as used but their visual lacking in this traffic function expose a futuristic quality, akin to the Italian Futurists, with The Motorcycle shown in class. R.H.
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