Friday 14 February 2014

Psychogeography, in two words


The science of strolling one could call it. In fact the word appeared in the 1960s among an Avant-Garde group of artists and militants issued from the Cobra group and later known as the Internationale Situationniste, the Mother of Mai '68.

The theory was that by the Dérive, i.e. the dedicated stroll, by which one or a group of people can recover  urban spaces lost to bad industrial planning. It is only in recent years that the concept has reached the attention of photogs under the name of Urban Shooting or Urbex.

See here

Curiously it is this picture/scenery that reminded me of the word. It is Piazza Iside in Rome, that I associate with a monument to Death, probably because of the Goddess Isis, the Egyptian Queen of Death and Rebirth, whose cult was well spread during the Empire. And I dubbed it:The Earthly Journey, since the crossing of the stairs seemed to me a crossing to another world - through the dimension of perspective.




Some places are ominous, or all of a sudden I become sensitive to them. I try to convey them through Photography, B&W here seemed appropriate to the theme.

Abandoned places, Urbex, is akin to the same disposition, The Situationnistes, the architect side, also connected to topology, places where to make connections. But I take it in the psychological sense, to find a place where you would like to meet somebody, or take an ominous picture.

No comments:

Post a Comment