Repetition, movement and the visual ontographies of urban rephotography: learning from Smoke (1995)

ABSTRACT

Engaging with a scene of the iconic movie Smoke (by Wayne Wang, 1995) in which a rephotographic project is sensitively elicited, this paper addresses the technique of repeat photography to contribute to methodological debates that have arisen within the nascent ‘Mobility and Humanities’ subfield. Through a humanistic perspective, the paper reviews and expands the nexus between mobility, photography and the urban by comparing the technique with three methodological issues: the blurring of supposed binaries, such as traditional/innovative, static/moving and fast/slow; the possibility of grasping the mobilities of the world in a post-human vein; and the opportunity to also consider techniques as sites for reflection. To address these issues, the paper draws from philosophies of movement, post-phenomenological and object-oriented stances and visual and urban cultural geographies. With reference to the urban realm, this paper proposes three perspectives on rephotography, namely (1) rephotography as a practice of slow and rhythmic attunement with circumstantial spacetimes moving backwards and forwards; (2) rephotography as a visual ontography that displaces the human and opens up space for the apprehension of the agency and mobility of things; and (3) rephotography as a continual process of activation of moving gazes on cities and their imaginaries.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobility and humanities
• repetition
• rephotography
• urban photography
• object-oriented philosophy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See for example S. Dollar, ‘The Brooklyn Cigar Shop That Never Was’, The Wall Street Journal, 11 December 2011; https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204026804577100500821824184 (accessed 11 April 2020).

2. For examples: http://www.klettandwolfe.com (accessed 26 August 2020).

3. http://www.camilojosevergara.com (accessed 26 August 2020).

4. https://youtu.be/qSfATEZiUYo and http://www.citizenheritage.com/pastport-app (accessed 26 August 2020).

5. See note 1. See also http://www.themoviedistrict.com/smoke-1995 and https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g60763-i5-k642153-The_Cigar_Shop_Corner_in_the_movie_SMOKE-New_York_City_New_York.html (accessed 26 August 2020).