Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

A saturation of images has constructed dominant, popularized representations of space that are often controlled by “Western” media and government agencies. Thus, images have come to play a fundamental role – alongside literary texts and oral testimonies – in the representation of architecture and the city. In a world populated by the visual, the naturalization of the consumption of images warrants interrogation. More than ever before, it is necessary to critically reflect on the visual as narrative practice through a deeper engagement with the role images play alongside other sources. Situating this practice, the paper will first discuss an oeuvre of historical and contemporary precedents from Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas to Hanne Darboven’s Cultural History 1880-1983, Lina Bo Bardi’s Picture Gallery in Transformation, Geoffrey Farmer’s Leaves of Grass, and Atlas Group’s Notebook volumes. These precedents trace alternative histories of everyday life through images, content and spatial arrangement. Subsequently, this paper will use two case studies from the Indo-Pacific Atlas – a large-scale photographic installation built for the inaugural 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial – to demonstrate how images are used to reveal counter-narratives on the city. The installation deliberately collected and arranged diverse sources to highlight affinities, expose absences and create new associations, in essence, applying the visual as narrative practice. This action yielded non-chronological and non-hegemonic constructions of urban realities in Beirut and Medellin. Advocating for images as a valid form of research and knowledge production, this paper embraces the tension between the “official” record and the possibility of alternative pasts, presents, and futures.