Sophia: journal on architecture , art and image
Issue #6: "Visual Spaces Of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations"
Submit all paper proposals to: info@cityscopio.com
Deadline: 28 February 2021
Expected publication date: December 2021
EXPECTED INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: MAY 2021
Submit all paper proposals to: info@cityscopio.com
Sophia is currently accepting the submission of articles for consideration, following the external Peer Review process as per described on the Editorial Policies section. All articles submitted should address the topic for the upcoming issue and be written in accord to the Author Guidelines.
In the upcoming 6th number of Sophia, which will be called Visual Spaces Of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations, we are interested in original articles that may address the following issues: How do we all become aware of the gradual, but inescapable changes in the environment? How does photography raise public awareness of the pressing environmental changes implicit in our anthropocentric epoch? How can photography contribute to these complex debates? These issues can be addressed from several perspectives: from confronting our memories and understandings of a place to reactivating ‘what is no longer there’ or proposing ‘what could be there’. Thus, the global theme of photographic documentation of environmental transformations will cover the following topics:
An instant world: truth and reality
Images of a perfect world are everywhere. On Instagram, in publicity, in videogames. They are the images of the truth; the subjective, abstract, imagined and non-physical existence. How, then, may we capture reality while collecting images? Is it without altering the raw material? In any case, our eyes work like lenses, and our mind is faithful (or true) to our eyes. Again: how can we photograph the facts, the objective reality? I would like to know how photographers respond or have responded, in the past, to this challenge, bearing in mind that this gesture is not to dethrone aesthetics, artistic impulsiveness or outer creativity, but the other way around: in recording a domain that is what it is, Man is encountering a real instant world.
Photographing the altered identity of landscapes
There is a challenge when using photography as both an inquiry tool and artistic form of expression for representing landscapes, which entails uncovering their physical, cultural, social and political marks as well as their identity, their perceived uniqueness as places. Landscapes are territories transformed by human action and, as such, they reveal the understanding and values of past and present societies and how we are transforming the environment. According to Lefebvre (La production de l’espace, 1974), one of the ways of conditioning social reproduction occurs through the economic and political restriction of a group accessing space, thus it is vital to call our attention to how landscapes are being significantly transformed, conditioned and controlled. How can we understand landscapes and their identity in the contemporary transformation processes resulting from the dynamics of change and disrupting habits of our societies?
Photographic narratives of urban transformations
Time, space, scale and movement are essential aspects of visual data production. Significant changes in cities’ flows can transpire in just a few minutes, hours or days, span several years or even decades. A diachronic study of an urban environment could concentrate on the repetitive patterns of many activities and phenomena that occur during a day or focus on transformations over much more extensive periods of time. Several photographic methods explicitly focus on sequentially researching social change and cultural expressions as they develop, over time in a particular space. Yet, art-based communication approaches express insights in more experimental ways, from ‘visual essays’ to digital storytelling, photo-novels, sometimes using pre-existing images, and even non-photographic ones. Boosted by new media technologies and networking opportunities, they are powerful contemporary vehicles for voicing and visualizing our reflections, ideas, arguments, experiences, and observations upon change, from manifestos to critical reviews, or just compelling stories.
Digital spectacle and its impact on architecture and the architectural image
As some argue that architecture is too slow for the digital revolution1, the resurrection of the collage, appeared as a viable strategy to critically reclaim architecture's place: one that, unlike simulations of binary realities, was to be a raw and ambiguous like an ‘open project’, even if computer simulated. Due to its success, the collage has been taken over by the market for its ‘arresting novelty’. As a commodity, it compensates for architecture's slow pace: faster to produce and consume, less related to the disciplinary process of the conception, more evocative and less ideological. To some, the ‘collage era’ represents the return of a richer, stronger profession2 while some claim they are blank postcards of a post-idealistic age, one where built quality rarely holds up. At a time when the true cost of globalization, consumption and constant growth is under discussion, should architecture embrace speed or is there the need for a counter-model?
Learn more about the open call here