The Topographic Imaginary

Attending to Place in Contemporary French Photography

Ari J. Blatt (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

256 Seiten

2024
Liverpool University Press (Verlag)
978-1-83553-728-2 (ISBN)

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Since the early 1980s, art photographers from metropolitan France have been training their lenses on ordinary landscapes throughout the country they call home. The Topographic Imaginary is the first book to study this important and flourishing trend. It examines work by artists who meld documentary and creative modes to attune viewers to places that mainstream culture tends to tune out, but which, as Ari J. Blatt argues, are in fact more meaningful than they initially appear. From views of building sites in Paris, peri-urban edgelands, or a tangle of trees in a forest, to those that ponder the play of light and shadow on roadside fields in Normandy or the tacky colors painted on dated village shopfronts, images that signal the emergence of a “topographic turn” in contemporary French photography constitute new ways of seeing and sensing France’s diverse national territory. As Blatt suggests, they also represent a visual laboratory through which to investigate how landscape “scapes” our understanding of French culture. In their efforts to reimagine a more traditional and
time-worn idea of France’s shared common space, topographic photographs animate
conversations about capital and class; cities and their peripheries; the
politics and impact of development; migration and borders; memory, history, and
affect; empire and postcolonialism; national identity; and the changing
environment. The Topographic Imaginary thus reveals how attending to place in pictures provides valuable insight into the disposition of a nation in flux.

Ari J. Blatt is an Associate Professor of French at the University of Virginia

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Chapter One: Construction Sights
Chapter Two: Peripheral Visions, or Paris Orbital
Chapter Three: Mission: France
Chapter Four: Thick Landscapes
Chapter Five: Roots and Routes
Coda: On the Ruins of Empire
Bibliography

Erscheinungsdatum	04.11.2024
Reihe/Serie	Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures ; 84
Zusatzinfo	53 Illustrations, color
Verlagsort	Liverpool
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Fotokunst
	Bildbände ► Europa ► Frankreich
	Sozialwissenschaften
ISBN-10	1-83553-728-6 / 1835537286
ISBN-13	978-1-83553-728-2 / 9781835537282
Zustand	Neuware