Mapping the City using Social Photography

Based on our discussions about facebook etc yesterday, here's an interesting study: called “The Geography of Buzz.” (article - NY Times, study paper)
The study involved using thousands of photographs taken from the stock company, Getty images, of social events in LA & NY over the space of 1 year, working on the assumption that because these photographs were for sale, that people were interested in them and what they depicted.
('there is no such thing as objective vision. We choose all the time what we see, and different things make us look' - Hockney)
They then filtered the images into different typologies and used the amounts to map the density of different types of events taking place in the two cities. Their findings reveal a new range of information about the urban space and its planning that can be gained from social sites such as facebook, flickr & twitter etc. It presents possibilities as to how the information traces that you leave behind you online - your data shadow - could be used for future planning of space.
The study was made by Elizabeth Currid, (School of Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California, LA) & Sarah Williams (director,Spatial Information Design Lab at Columbia University‘s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation)

Here's a link to Godard & Gorin's film 'A Letter to Jane' (1972). This film was mentioned in chpt 4 of Sontag's 'On Photography', part of the reading list for this week. The film is a cinematic essay that deconstructs a news photograph of Jane Fonda in Hanoi taken by photographer Joseph Kraft. It provides insight on how to read a photograph and discern both the the intentional and unintentional meaning of its framing, subject, angle, focus, setting and how this relates to the given caption, particularly in parts iii-vi of the video link.
Film Links: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI.

I've added a link to Frank Abruzzese's website, an American photographer who lives and works in Wexford. He is interested in questioning photography's accepted role as a factual document.
He takes some interesting shots of construction sites, revealing them as unearthly landscapes.
Also of interest are the results of a workshop he ran on identity, based on Galton's forays into composite portraiture and profiling.

LECTURE - DARA MC GRATH

WED 15 APRIL, 7PM


Dara will be giving a lecture in the red room, School of Architecture, UCD.
There will be a wine reception afterwards at which the results of the arcsoc photography competition will be announced. Ros Kavanagh is guest judge of the competition.

Helen Levitt - 1913-2009.
Slideshow, Books

TRACERYSCAPE - AKI LUMI

Traceryscape - SH521, painting on gelatin-silver print, 50x60cm

Aki Lumi - Layering of image and surface

LONG EXPOSURES - MICHAEL WESELY


9.8.2001 - 2.5.2003, The Museum of Modern Art, NY.



5.4.1997 - 3.6.1999, Postdamer Platz, Berlin.



5.4.1997 - 3.6.1999, Postdamer Platz, Berlin.

Mikhail Bakhtin used the term 'chronotope' for the spatio-temporal matrix governing the base condition of all narratives and other linguistic acts. It can be translated directly as 'space-time'. Bakhtin viewed time and space as equal and interdependent. One cannot exist without the other.
Wesely's photographs could be read as chronotopes - densely detailed landscapes that allow the viewer to interpret construction through space and time simultaneously, revealing their layeredness and interdependency. In the same vein, but employing different methods, the panoramas posted below allow the viewer to become immersed in the photograph, piecing their way through time and space. The interaction with the viewer employed in these and the discarding of formal photographic structures of linear-perspective/decisive moment is analogous with the growth of non-linear multi-perspectival film-making (link).

SOME PHOTOGRAPHIC PANORAMAS


Eadweard Muybridge, San Francisco 1878


Jeff Wall, Restoration 1993


Jules Spinatsch, Davos January 2003


Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, The day nobody died, 2008

I've added a link to Light & Space& Structure, an architectural photography blog that has some good information on technique (shooting & editing), equipment and further links to American architectural photography.

Monday March 23rd, 2pm, Hugh will give a talk called Nothing Happens, dealing mainly with the work of Jules Spinatsch. Have a look at his very comprehensive website, particularly the Temporary Discomfort and Heisenberg's Offside projects.

This is a a sequence of shots taken by Ronan Kenny of the lower level of the UCD restaurant building over 30 minutes. Ronan is part of Paul Kenny's 4th year module this semester exporing daylight in spaces in and around Dublin.
Part of their work method involves using photography to investigate the daylighting in these spaces and using the data collected to re-create the daylighting conditions under the artifical sky. They are going to make a series of large scale models of the spaces, and then photograph them using the same parameters...looks like very interesting work...watch this space!

barry frydlender

I've added a link to John Davies website. Davies photographed the housing projects for the British Pavilion at Venice last year, and was mentioned in Ellis Woodman's lecture on Friday. He photographs urban buildings from a higher viewpoint than normal, incorporating a lot of the context around them.

Fiona Hackett has just sent me this link to a new Irish blog of critical writing on photography.

this site is very useful, not so much for its own content as for its great list of links to museums, online collections etc.

and this one selects images from countless contemporary photographers.

If you like Edward Burtynsky, check out David Maisel's work here

Thanks to Alice for the photos.  Captures the atmosphere very well I think. I've added a few sites which are good sources for reasonably high-res images if you just do simple name searches. If you find galleries through artnet, its best to go to the gallery's own site for images. You might have to do screenshots in some cases if you can't download the images.

23/02/09

By the way, just to let you know that I will be giving two lectures to the Art History Masters in 'Art and the City' next Tuesday, Feb 24th between 3pm and 5pm, in Room J009 in Newman Building, Belfield. Any of you are welcome to come. The titles are:

Open Heart City: Intimacy and Spectacle in the films of Pedro Almodovar

and of more immediate relevance,

Heads: Philip Lorca diCorcia and the paradox of urban portraiture.

I've added links to Fiona Hackett & Dara McGrath, both of whom may be coming to Richview as judges for the arcsoc photographic comp.worth checking out. Fiona was involved in the space framed seminar last year & Dara was involved with 'Lives of Spaces'.

If you like Shore, check out this link to a video about his work - he discusses briefly how & why he takes his images, and the spatial complexities within them

ps - worth noting that I just misspelled Galassi and don't know how to fix it, and that, not knowing how to add links to this site, I have added some to my own, connected blog - hughspacehugh. Needless to add, I haven't done this kind of thing before...

research for mon 23 Feb

Next week, we will discuss the work of Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander and Stephen Shore. In preparation take a look at the following books in the library: Garry Winogrand, Figments of the Real World; Peter Galassi (ed) Lee Friedlander, Lee Friendlander, Sticks and Stones: Architectural America; Stephen Shore, Uncommon Places. Read Lynn Tillman's interview with Shore at the back of the book. (Also see Interview with Shore by Schuman, and Lynne Tillman on Stephen Shore's roadtrip) You could also read the introductions to the Winogrand and Friedlander monographs. There is an interesting interview with Joel Meyerowitz at the end of Westerbeck and Meyerowitz, Bystander in which he discusses his experiences of working with Winogrand.

research for mon 16 feb

The assignment for next week is to look at 2 projects in detail and familiarise yourself with the other.

-William Klein - Life is Good and Good for you in New York

copy on temp reserve (careful with it please!)

-Robert Frank - The Americans

ditto - also read Kerouac's short intro

I addition read Chapters 17 and 18 of Bystander, which deal with Klein and Frank respectively

-And take a look at programme 4 in the Genius of Photography (dvd copy from Alice) which features William Klein extensively

-In addition please look at Helen Levitt, A Way of Seeing, and read the introduction by James Agee (mate of both her and Walker Evans-writer of 'let use now praise famous men')

copy on temp reserve