Between Decay and Decorum: Photographers' Awareness of the Urban Scene

• Main Author: Michele Smargiassi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Bologna 2020-12-01
• Series: European Journal of Creative Practices in Cities and Landscapes
• Subjects: decay; decorum; metropolis; photography; marginalization
• Online Access: https://cpcl.unibo.it/article/view/11884

The development of the metropolis and the birth of photography are contemporary phenomena, but their relationship is not unidirectional; photography has not only represented the city, it has also suggested its best form and conditioned its ideology. In the dialectical opposition between decay and decorum, a powerful instrument of urban-social despotism, the photographers of the city have sometimes sided with the powers in place disciplining spaces and at other times with the critics of urbanism and its failures: but is a clear opposition between the two attitudes really possible? To what extent can showing the decay can incite the restoration of decorum, and how? Has the visual denouncement of urban social marginalization contributed to urge interventions of repression rather than rebalancing this situation? By quickly retracing the history of urban photography from the 19th century to the present day, this text tries to identify its ambiguities and highlight some attempts at apprehending an image of the urban environment that includes a redemption in terms of inclusion, justice, and citizenship.