Royal Photogrammetric Institute, Berlin, west facade of the Stadtschloss, Berlin, with subway construction in the foreground, 1896, gelatin silver print (one of a series of eight images)
Photograph: Courtesy of Miriam Paeslack

Heinrich Zille, Parochialstrasse towards west with view of the Nicolaikirche towers, Berlin, ca. 1900, gelatin silver print
Photograph: Courtesy of Miriam Paeslack

New Thematic Group on Urban Photography and Film

The EAHN thematic group Urban Photography, Film, and Video aims at assessing, contextualizing, and theorizing urban still and moving imagery.  While artists, journalists, and non-professional photographers have often focused on the city, the urban image has undergone far less scrutiny than the city as subject matter in literature, for example.  The goal of this thematic group is therefore not only to establish a scholarly platform for the urban image of the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries, but also to open a dialogue between disciplines such as visual studies, film studies, architectural history, urbanism / planning, human geography, and anthropology.

This thematic group hopes to expand the field of urban imagery studies by focusing on urbanicity beyond the core European model.  European metropolises and rural life are the point of departure for a transnational and transdisciplinary discussion that takes into consideration the growing challenges of defining what a city is in the age of globalization and of the increasingly immaterial city or what Manuel Castells calls the “city of flows.”

The group operates via casual and more goal-oriented exchanges that lead to thematic sessions at international conferences, workshops and symposia and to the establishment of a durable and broadly embedded scholarly community around this theme. A Google group “Urban Photography, Film, and Video” serves as a platform for announcements and exchange between the now approximately twenty-five international group members.

For further information on future activities, or to join the group, please provide contact information and a short biography to the group initiator Miriam Paeslack, paeslack@buffalo.edu.