Watching, Waiting: The Photographic Representation of Empty Places

Watching,Waiting is a collection of essays that explores the topic of emptiness as an object of study, considering its interrelationships with photography and place. The contributors approach the subject from various disciplines, providing insights into diverse production models of empty places and their complex global and local relations. The book includes a range of visual and scholarly essays, covering topics such as Nicosia's buffer zone, protest photographs, historic landscape photography, and images of empty airports. Through still and moving images, it examines the photographic aestheticization of emptiness, stereotypes of empty places, and transformations of human experiences.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 312 pages
Publication date: 12 October 2023
Publisher: Leuven University Press

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the issue of empty places has gained renewed attention and significance. Watching, Waiting presents a collection of essays, both photographic and written, that explores emptiness as an object of study that extends beyond the present. The contributors approach the specific interrelationships of photography and place through emptiness by considering historical and contemporary material in equal measure. Drawing on fields such as architecture, anthropology, sociology, and public health, they provide insights into geographically and temporally diverse production models of empty places and their corresponding complex and sensitive global and local relations. The book's chapters, which include visual and scholarly essays, cover a wide range of topics, spanning static film footage of Nicosia's buffer zone, protest photographs following Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Bristol, staged images from the University of Zagreb's ethnological archives, historic landscape and architectural photography, aerial shots of COVID-19 mass graves in Brazil, photos of artificially built field hospitals and quarantine rooms during the pandemic, and images of empty airports at night. Through still and moving images, Watching, Waiting examines the photographic aestheticization of emptiness, existing stereotypes of empty places, and transformations of human experiences. The ebook is available for free at OAPEN Library, JSTOR, Project Muse, and Open Research Library.

Contributors:
Ruth Baumeister, Aarhus School of Architecture
Isabelle Catucci da Silva, Federal University of Parana
Stella Fatovic-Ferencic, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Weight: 730g
Dimension: 234 x 156 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9789462703759