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Panorama de Constantinople Papier Salé James Robertson 1854
http://www.past-to-present.com/photos.cfm?reference=G19006
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“… there is no single traditional development by which we can map the photographic response [to the city].”
So finishes Clarke in his chapter on “The City in
Photography” after surveying the approaches of a number of photographers known
for their work in what Clarke claims have been the principle loci for urban photography: London, Paris and New York. Basically, he’s saying that unlike landscape photography,
which has demonstrated a fairly consistent outlook, there are so many approaches
and views of the city that it’s difficult to classify urban photography.
The earliest trend he notes is the panorama, borrowed from
the tradition of panoramic paintings, in which the artist attempts to capture
the entirety of the urban landscape. At
the other extreme are street-level photographers with varying preoccupations,
from the documentarian trying to affect social conditions, to the voyeur
recording the drama of the “Naked City;” from archeologists like Atget, who emphasized
the human scale of the city, to idealists like Stieglitz, whose photos
emphasized form and tone in an attempt to create an idealized image of an ideal
city.
Perhaps because he doesn’t have a central theme, this
chapter seems to have a bit more than the usual of Clarke’s intellectual obfuscation. Here’s a great example:
“[Photography’s] underlying response has always been in relation to the visual complexity of a city both as an image and an experience.”
Ask yourself – what else
could it be?
The most disappointing aspect of this chapter is the lack of
illustrations. There are no examples of
urban panoramas, nor any photos from the following artists mentioned in the
text: Charles Negre, Charles Marville, WHF
Talbot, Thomas Annan, Bruce Davidson, and Jacob Riis.
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