Issue 1 (70)
| VISUALIZING THE CITY IN ROOFTOPPING PHOTOGRAPHY | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | 2021 | Number | 1(70) |
| Pages | 80-88 | Type | scientific article |
| UDC | 778 | BBK | 85.16 |
| Authors | Abashev Vladimir V. |
Topic | SEMIOTICS OF THE CITY IN LITERARY TEXTS |
| Summary | The article examines the representation of the city in rooftopping photography. Methodologically, the research is based on A. Lefebvre’s concept of social space, and also M. de Certeau’s concept of spatial practices as agents of its production. The principal notions in this analytical framework employed in the article are the urban imaginary and the gaze in constructivist understanding, which not only reflects, but also forms the object of vision. Rooftopping photography is considered in the context of the history of the view of the city from above, which has become an important factor in the urban imagination. The expansion of rooftopping photography into the public space and the presentation of cities is associated with the development of new communication and optical representation technologies in the 2010s. The analysis of the rooftoppers’ visualizing of the city carried out in semantic, aesthetic and rhetorical aspects revealed its substantive and aesthetic qualities. Rooftoppers photos capture the moment when a person faces the city as a whole. The city converges with natural and landscape objects. In the night panoramas that make up the bulk of roofer photography, the city is represented as a space of energy flows. In rhetorical terms, in contrast to the metonymy of a promenade, roofer photography is metaphorical. In general, it is concluded that the subject of rooftopper photography is not so much the identity of the city as its universal urban beginning embodied in the centers of the world’s megalopolises. Following D. Nye and his interpreters, the aesthetic mode of the city in roofer visuality is interpreted as urban version of the sublime. | ||
| Keywords | roofing, gaze, urban imaginary, sublime, flow space, visuality | ||
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