Photography as Alternative Urbanism

A debate exploring the relevance of contemporary photography for the investigation and interpretation of the city as a complex cultural phenomenon, chaired by Dr Alexandra Stara with artists Rut Blees Luxemburg and Hannah Collins, novelist Tom McCarthy and architect Patrick Lynch. 

Drawing from both photographic discourses and emerging ideas of alternative urbanism, this debate will discuss the relevance of photography as artistic practice for the exploration and interpretation of the city as a complex cultural phenomenon.

In the past two decades a growing body of photographic work has challenged established categories, in an attempt to represent the richness, ambiguity and often conflict of our late modern notion of place. Artists have been increasingly attracted to the blurred boundaries and surprising intersections of culture and nature, fact and fiction, private and public, to produce work that reveals complex modes of inhabitation, appropriation, alienation and destruction. Simultaneously, in the realm of cultural and urban theory, scholars have consistently argued for a broadening of our intellectual stance and range of media for engaging with the modern urban phenomenon.

Strange Places: Urban Landscape Photography
The debate coincides with the exhibition Strange Places: Urban Landscape Photography at the Stanley Picker Gallery, curated by Alexandra Stara, featuring the artists: Sabine Bitter/Helmut Weber (b.1960/1957, Austria); Rut Blees Luxemburg (b.1967, Germany); Hannah Collins (b.1956, UK); Ori Gersht (b.1967, Israel); Steffi Klenz (b.1979, Germany); Sze Tsung Leong (b.1970, Mexico); Mark Power (b.1959, UK); Xavier Ribas (b.1960, Spain); Heidi Specker (b.1962, Germany); Thomas Weinberger (b.1964, Germany); Rachel Wilberforce (b.1975, UK).

Exhibition dates: 30 September - 21 November 2009 

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