Juxtaposition and visualising the middle ground in the unequal city

Abstract

This photo essays fleshes out the notion of juxtaposition, both as an empirical reality in unequal cities but also as a visual and aesthetic technique to capture the overlaps between powerful and everyday city fabrics. Across a series of nine images, I illustrate the visual practice of juxtaposition by finding the edge of the two fabrics within the same place, of contrasting textures and tones, the product of chance material collisions. But I also wish to move beyond the juxtaposition of unequal materialities to capture other jagged and sundered activities and encounters, between people and materiality, between the holy and profane, between the old and the new. Further, I ask how juxtaposition can be a visual practice in and of itself, and to what ends for capturing the twenty-first century city.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Geoffrey Deverteuil

Geoffrey DeVerteuil (PhD Southern California, 2001) is a Reader of Social Geography at Cardiff University. He considers himself a social geographer of the city, with over 20 years' academic experience at the University of Manitoba, the University of Southampton and now Cardiff University. With over 50 refereed journal articles, 22 book chapters and 2 books, his research has consistently focused on the processes and outcomes of inequality in cities, whether around homelessness, the voluntary sector, mental health, substance abuse, gentrification, or immigration. He has further considered the responses to entrenched inequality, including resilience and the commons. His research is international in scope, focusing on the US, Australia, Canada and the UK. Most recently, he has begun to use visual methods to represent emerging trends in inequality across the twenty-first century city.