New York watching the fall of the World Trade Centre. Images taken by people who were there at the time.
The lecture looks at the city of modernism, the beginners of an urban sociology, the city as public and private space, the city in postmodernism and the relation of the individual to the crowd in the city.
Trade fair that attemps to celebrate the city in the part of the early 20th century
Public health and safety, education
Simmel reverses what he is asks to do and decides to focus on the city
Leading up to the time when Freud's psychoanalysis theory
Concern that the city might swallow up individuals
Overwhelmed by the techological things in the city
A worker engaged in the construction of the city
No health and safety measures in place here
Vulnerability presented in Hine's images
The rise of the city that we know and recognise now
Pioneered by architect Louis Sullivan
Form follows function
Although it is very decorative, the way that the form follows function applies is in the organisation of the building
The basement is where the mechanics are so they are unseen
Influenced the city sky line because of the fire which clears a lot of the city centre buildings and makes way for his new buildings and this new landscape
Silent movie which illustrates the city
Looking at the production line
Production line is designed and set up to involve the repetitive movements
Mass production and mass consumption
The Ford production of cars
Fordism comes to relate to the whole motion
You are maintaining the system by earning the money as an employer and then putting it back in to the company - repetitive action
A critique of the idea of the production line
He physically gets stuck in the machine himself
A typical Chaplin film
He is bad at the production line and messes it up causing chaos
Suffers a mental breakdown and goes crazy all over the factory
He gets accused of being a communist
As a waiter he performs a pantomime which becomes a hit
At the end of the film we get art over industry
In the factory the machine makes use of him
MI5 spied on Chaplin
Juxtaposition of the people in the food queue
We have this questioning of the American dream
The promise that was offered to immigrants and people in rural areas
The Flaneur is a bourgeois figure
He experiences the city from a removed point of view because of his class and position, so he is an observer
The idea that art should capture this and we see it recorded in impressionist paintings at the time
Gentlemen are sitting down and observing this scene
They are part of the crowd and apart from the crowd
Attempts to categorise and organise the planet
The arcades that Benjamin investigates is designed for a view of the city that is uninterrupted by the weather so there is a protected environment
This would be an ideal spot to observe humanity
There is also an attempt to incorporate this with urban planning
Presents the photographer as the flaneur
Observing but not participating
This is particularly important in street photography
Appears to be an observed moment that is in fact a constructed moment
Repeat of this motif of a grainy black and white experience of the city
Started to look at it as a drunken flaneury
He is looking a this particular district of Toyko
Fascination of the slightly darker side of the city
Streets of New York in 1950
Wolff says that there should be an investigation of the female figure on the street
Susan investigates Walter Benjamin and the Arcades
She suggests that often there is a suggestion that the only representation of the female in the street is that they are either a bad lady or a prostitute
The blackness is heavier around her body
We are getting a still from the story
Something has happened or is about to happen
We are not told what that is but there is an implication of darkness
Documents the black and white photography at a distance
Writes a diary style entry to accompany it
She knows that the story isn't going to end it is going to continue and at some point she will be confronted by the person that she is following
The idea that is looked at in the film 'Don't look now' a couple who go to Venice to recover after the loss of a child and they are haunted by a figure with a red cape, this is a way of explaining a metaphor of the mind - a state of grief which they are trapped in and they are not sure what is real and what is imagination and what is fantasy
She hires a private detective to follow her and pays someone
She records him following her
This is another feature of her work
His diary of her is shown in the final exhibit
Tries to appear as though she is leading him around like a love story almost
Film still rely of a film noir stereotype
Beautiful but trapped by her desire
The woman dwarfed by the city
World Trade Centre - shot at the base of it
Wanted to make it look unidentifiable
The experience of the city is played upon
It is about imagery of the city rather than the city itself
Taken again at 911
The expression of the woman on the street is uncannily similar to Cindy Sherman's image from 1977
Even the camera angle is the same
Dark experience of the city
Reporting on emergencies in the city
Photographs in the way that we see here
His name comes from the fact that people thought he had a weegee board
Got there before the press as soon as the crime is committed
He has a radio in his car which is a centre for all of the action
He also develops his films in the back of his car in a dark room
Two way access to these events
These kinds of images influence the film noir genre
A book developed in to a film
The first video game showed at the Tribecca film festival
Film set in LA
You play as the crime investigator
Players much investigate
Sophisticated level of game play
Modernism in film
Although picture in 1929 is a city of the future
Image of the skyscrapers appearing
They are also appearing in Bladerunner
Borrowing from historical periods
The aesthetic goes back to the film noir aesthetics
The face in the crowd
The idea of the individual and the relation to the crowd
Something only experienced in the city
Investigates in several different cities
He hides lights in the pavement and sets up a trip wire system that illuminates individuals
At this point he photographs them
They almost look like film stills
There is this kind of detachment created by the lighting
Singling somebody out with the lighting
The loneliness of the city in the crowd
Work was backed up by the legal system
As it was made for artistic purposes and not for commercial gain he was allowed to use the individual's image
There is a separation made there of financial gain for commercial reasons
People directly staring in to the lens, they are unaware that the photograph is being taken
Moments of between
Neither here nor there
A limbo
Everyone in the image appears to be alone
Ideas investigated suggesting that buildings constuct our behaviour
The idea of an unseen seer who is seen
Investigates New York looking at colour images
Different to the black and white images in modernism
Lack of direction in the framing here
We are not told where to look
Dark and dramatic image
Detachment from something you would expect people to react to
The event is recorded almost endlessly on film but also through a type of journalism
Means that the city and the observes become one in the collapse of the building
She re edits the film so that it runs backwards
The footage of the towers falling was shown again and again to the point where you can no longer relate in any kind of describable way what it happening
Idea is child like
The image that you see is purposely over pixelated
Using google images
Photography is no longer enough to reflect such an event
