Research in development
The visual cultures of contemporary urbanism
CUCR has in recent years developed a research, teaching and practical interest in the visual cultures of the city. In the late 1990s the 'Visible Cities, Invisible Lives' portfolio of work associated with resident photographer Paul Halliday began to interrogate the relationship between cultural form and photographic representation. A combination of community projects, curatorial works and short courses has grown over the last five years.
In research terms the Centre is interested in the opportunities photographic practice offers to an engagement with city cultures. Our work has included working with refugee groups in the production of photographic portraits on a local estate, tying photographic representation of the city to projects of urban regeneration and thinking through the relationship between the diversity of the city and its(in)visibility in vernacular and conventional narratives and representations of the urban.
Paul Halliday has for over a decade worked on his own London project (link opens a new browser window) that documents an alternative history of Black London and was represented in a 2006 conference at Tate Modern. Les Back and Michael Keith (working with Phil Cohen) developed photographic work as part of an interrogation of the relationship between place and the politics of identity for young people in the ESRC funded Finding the Way Home research project in the 1990s and this has led to a number of related doctoral and masters research pieces of work and ties in to the Sociology Department's live sociology programme that investigates the practice of social research with new media.
On a teaching front, the Centre has developed the MA in Photography and Urban Cultures programme, that brings together debates around cultural theory and urbanism with practitioners of photography. Some of the work that has emerged through the MA programme can be seen at www.urbanphotographyatgoldsmiths.org.
For more details or inquiries about possible work around the visual cultures of contemporary urbanism, please contact Paul Halliday either through the Centre's main switchboard (0207-919-7390) or by e-mailing p.halliday (@gold.ac.uk).