In modernism the city starts to feature as an investigation in art. We are going to be looking at the beginnings at the type of urban sociology.
Simmel is German sociologist and his essay is a really important essay and is used by some of the Frankfurt school writers and thinkers. They use his essay as a starting point about there essay about the city.
A sort of trade far that attempts to celebrate the city. Simmel reverses what he is asked to do and talks about the effects of the city on the individual. This is at the same time of Freud thinking of his essay.
There was a fear at the beginning 20th century that the city may swallow up individuals as they would become overwhelmed with the technology. This picture below is the worker engaged in construction high in the city as you can see it in the background, with no health & safety in place so there is vulnerability in place.
This is pioneered by Sullivan and is built of a red terracotta material. It is a modern skyscraper. The phrase of form follows function came from the article louis wrote.
The way the form follows function applies is in the organisation of the building so the basement is the utility area which is below ground so the mechanic of the building is not seen.
This clears a lot of city centre buildings and makes way for his new aspirational building. The whole idea of the American dream of rising up to the sky shows power & strength of the commercial & industrial environment.
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Here we have the celebration of the city skyline. We have the themes of intermingling of transportation and people getting from A to B.
He was a street photographer as well as video maker. He was know for his celebration of themes of Detroit. These investigations are also influenced by political investigations like Gramski.
The production line is a point where humans bodies are used for low-cost and spew out specialist manufacturing. The term Fordism has come to defining the use of using humans in this way. She comments of the irony of that you work all day to earn money to buy things back off them. Earning your money as am employee then putting it back into the company.
This is a critique of the production line. The film is a typical Chaplin style, he goes into the work of production and can't do it so gets in the machine. Although the result is that he gets accused of been a communist. At the end of the film we get a triumph of art over history.
Stock Market Crash 1929
The idea of unsettling of the workers. We have this questioning of the kind of American dream that was offered to immigrants and people of rural areas.
He is using techniques that are really pioneering and a really exploration of the medium in the film.
The movie is composed of individual shots and we get the idea of looking at the impact on of the city on individuals. A film made up of stills.
It is the figure that conducts this investigation of the city. It comes form the french verb of a lounger. The flaneur is inevitably a figure of the 19th century. Its someone who walks around the city taking it in, he is experinece the city in a removed sort of view rather than a worker he is an observer. Part of his role is to record what he sees.
He is a person who walks the city in order to experience it. This drawing is showing a couple of gentlemen observing the scene. There are apart from the crowd and part of the crowd, there is a removal on city life.
He attempts to categories different aspects of city life. Its an incomplete book and never finished his life. The arcades in which Benjamin investigates which is designed for the view of the city which is uninterrupted by the weather The protected environment, this would be an ideal spot of the flaneur and make notes for literature purposes.
Susan Sontag on Photography
She presents the photographer whilst involved but removed and hiding behind the camera. The camera is a way of gaining access of been allowed to look. This photo appears to be an observed mombnet which is in fact a constructed moment. It is not street photography
So what we see in Moriyama is the repeat of motif of the grainy black and white experience of the city. Its like a drunken flaneury, he is stubbling form one location to another. There is this fascination of the darker side of the city. The shots of the floor which is the composition if off angle is suggesting him investigating Americanisation in Tokyo.
Can we have a flaneuse?
Janet Wolff investigates this idea, she is suggesting that the reason why a flanuer is a male because a female would not be investigating the streets alone in that time. She also says that there should be an investigation of the female figure on the street.
She looks at the female figure on the street. She writes the dialectics of seeing, she says that often the women is either a bag lady or a prostitute. This is strangeness, is seen as in the city.
The woman surround by an expanse of black. The blackness if heavier around her silhouette which is heavier on top of her shoulders therefore an uncomfortable sense created. We are getting a still from a story.
Arbus
The action of the woman smoking and staring int space we get the same feeling of something has happened or going to happen.
She documents black and white photography at a distance. She describes turns is round to investigate the opposite. the choice of Venice as a location is labyrinth and the city is a kind of place that you can get lost but you can end up back where you can.
Venice - Don't look now.
A couple who go to Venice after the lose of their child. This story is used a a metaphor for the mind as there in a state of trauma and trapped in this state of what is real and imagination. What is desire to see her again and the fear that might actually be happening. This plays with our idea of i=time & memory.
This is a theme throughout Calles work and she says someone to follow her and she records him following her. This is a complicated doubling of her viewing. This is psychological labyrinth of her appearing to leading him around, like a love story.
These relying on a film noir still type. It is normally beautiful but trapped by her desire of money or love.
Here is New York Book
The expression of the woman on the street on 9/11 is uncannily like the expression of the Cindy Sherman expression.
He is a press photographer in the 1940s reporting the emergencies in the city. His name comes form people believing he must have a weegee board due to not knowing how he can get there so fast to a n unknown event. What is actually happening is that he has radio in his car and allows him to have access to these events sometimes before the police get there.
A book of weegees images turns into a film in 1948, in this we have the ideal beautiful and vunerable female.
The first video game to be shown at the Tribecca film festival. The film set in LA in this case. you play as the crime investigator. The result in story changes in the way of your decisions of you as a detective. This shows a sophisticated way of game play.
This is a city of the future, the skyscrapers appearing which postmodern mixing and borrowing from historical periods. The real post modern pastiche of styles in the film.
The face in the crowd, this investigates the idea of the individuals relation to the crowd. He investigates in several different cities. he hides lights in the city which he highlights individual these are not constructed they are not aware of been photographed and the form of surveillance. The idea of the photographer having a ticket to invasion of private space.
This is a law suit by the gentleman here when he argued that he had objected by saying his privacy ahd been breached. But the individual is not supported in US law.
He is the original street voyeur, these people are also unaware of been photographed and allow him to snap these private moments. Everyone in the image appears alone and separate despite of the environment they are in.
The building can structure our behavior, and give us a sense of disorder.
Here we are looking at colour images that are very different fromt he black and white images in modernism. The framing is not telling us where to look as this image is very busy with action & text & adverising. The eyes are overwhelmed by the signs and the chaotic information. There is this kind of level of detail without this unity of him telling us where to look.
9/11 Citizen Journalism
The is no room for someone been a detached observer for the way the event has been recorded on film endlessly and through a type of citizen journalism. This recording by normal people of these extraordinary events are becoming one and immersion of individuals are connecting to the city. The falling of towers is what is so endourisious to the Americans.
This is also something Liz Wells looks at she looks a type of surveillance city where as everything is recorded by CCTV. She says that if the 19th century saw this imagery.
She looks here at the power of the 7/7 bomber which was used for there conviction. that rise of this journalist that images where on websites like flickr. This again is the kind of reference of democracy and the photography of the image becomes more important than the aesthetic.
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