Representation of a City: Sohei Nishino
With reference to one representation, performance or text, describe how the experience of a particular city can be successfully evoked through techniques that lie outside the confines of traditional social science method or "objective‟ documentation of urban life.
"Sohei says of his images: 'Through the eyes of an outsider it will be the embodiment of how I remember the city, and a diary of the streets I walk'." (Gallery website 2011)
In order to approach this task with a sense of exploration, as opposed to using a prefixed or already experienced representation, I offered the essay question out on a popular social networking site. I received many different, but all very interesting, suggestions. The one I decided to go for was, handily enough, showing at a new exhibition in a gallery in London (see copy of the image in the appendix – although this small image does in no way do it justice). The image is by a Japanese photographer called Sohei Nishino (28). He names his series of works (currently the exhibition consists of eight cities) the 'Diorama Map'. The word 'diorama' is usually used in reference to scale three-dimensional models of images or scenes and is obviously used here to highlight how the image is to be viewed: as a multidimensional representation of the cities. The maps are created by walking through the city, scouting out locations on foot and taking pictures (over 10,000 were taken of London, with 4000 being used in the final piece). The pictures are then printed and pasted onto a canvas, piecing the city back together "reshaping the city as he remembers it" (gallery website 2011). It is this process of remembering, or as Sohei calls it, re-remembering, that makes his work very reminiscent of Kevin Lynch's Image of the City (1960). The photography involves one month of walking the streets and taking pictures. There is a further three or four months of work to piece the images back together.
Although this technique of representation of a city is by no means objective, we can see how it provides a fascinating insight into, not only a representation of a city, but the process of exploration, of location finding, and also of remembering, of reconstruction of the city from fragmented parts/images and memories, into a complete whole; one that may not be geographically accurate but one that contains an entire city in one place.
"The defining dimension of our urban experience is of how the parts form some kind of complex whole. This is what we mean when we say `Boston', or `London' or `Sydney'. The greatest phenomenologal puzzle about the city is perhaps what we mean by these names." (Hillier 2005:6)
As capably stated above, the inherent problem for urban planners, architects and, in a less applied sense, geographers and sociologists, is the problem with grasping the complexity of modern urban environments so typified by London, Sydney or New York. It is a problem for these people as they all, in one way or another, seek to understand the city so that they might be able to shape its future, limit some aspects and highlight more desirable ones. But such manipulation requires a far greater level of complexity than we currently have. The sheer multiplicity of interactions and social relations inherent within a city make defining it, and therefore constructing, designing and maintaining it, extremely problematic. Without being able to understand how the city forms as sense of identity, or how its connections between parts are manifest, it remains impossible to predict outcomes to a workable level. Throughout this, cities manage to hold a sense of itself that is coherent enough to facilitate communication. When we talk of 'London', we inherently know what we mean, there is no question of a part of London, or what defines it boundaries. Yet although these places are perceived as singular entities, the best academic theories fail to coherently grasp the complexity. A city manages to hold a complete sense of the 'whole', something that could be understood as having a character or identity that is found both within its many fractured aspects, but also indicating a more ontological sense of 'being in the city', wherever you are 'in the city'. But the problem, especially for a sociologist, extends beyond the issue of complex part/ whole relations (that may itself be a problematic dualism) it is also a problem of objectivity over subjectivity. Many social scientists have recently attempted to deal with the problem of objectivity by exploring representations of a counter factual nature; that of subjectivity. These have taken many forms and many have involved photography such as auto-photography and Photovoice.
Diorama Map: The role of Cognitive map making.
The connection this work has to cognitive maps is obvious when you look at the images, and it is reinforced when you enter the gallery. Knowing the importance of the link the gallery hosts map sure as to place an example on show:
http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/map.phpThis early map shows an image dated around 1560 London then is much smaller and does not reach to what is now called the Isle of Dogs. There is a very strong connection between the two representations of London, even though they are some 450 years apart. Firstly we can see that the two images are orientated in basic ways - they are taken from south looking north, as you would expect, and that the river is the central aspect of the piece. Much as the city was constructed the image shows the importance of the river to the people living there. It governs form of the city and therefore forms of the representation. There is a lot of life to the river. It flows with the currents and boats of different sizes travel along its length. So too the Diorama map of London; there Sohei has kept the river alive with signs of people and transportation. Some boats have been cut out of images and over laid onto the river, whilst at other times he places the boat in the context of its bow waves and docks. The horizon flows away at the top of the picture, giving this sense of a perspective boarder, the top of it showing what is now Hampsted Heath and Regents Park, merely extensions of the surrounding countryside in 1560.
Interestingly, and this is harder to make out in this poor image, the buildings are represented as three dimensional shapes, quite the contrary to recent popular maps that are top-down two dimensional images, where buildings are just squares between streets. Here the buildings each have shape and character, although some of the larger and more 'important' have more detail and specificity, the smaller ones are still three dimensional if formulaic. This format is exactly the same as the one used by Sohei. Each street, each area and each location is build up of images of the buildings and the strips of roads that separate them. The majority of the image is made up of these buildings that appear to mould together to form faceless fronts, bereft of a unique identity but somehow being recognisable as 'London', like remembering a face but not knowing where from. The only 'space' on the picture is the horizon at the top and the areas of sky that frames the tall buildings. The comparison to the old map and this new piece is again seen with the importance of the river. Without the river you feel the map would have very little relevance to reality. The river structures the image making it 'feel' more accurate, certainly easier to navigate. The small amount of roads that are highlighted in the image are done so through perspective, and as such have been chosen (it seems) out of the function of the 'straightness' of each – although I am not a driver so the significance of the roads could be alluding me here, but I would say they hold little importance to Sohei either.
As Robert Kitchin explores in his 1994 paper, cognitive maps are re-representations, such as Sohei's images of cities that encompass both an environmental and a spatial aspect of place. Such maps are of 'places' rather than of streets or abstract spaces. These maps are tools of simplification of places that enable people to pass through and guide themselves around these areas. Sohei's piece is, in essence, a very complex and beautifully reproduced, cognitive map. But why cognitive maps are so important and what does Sohei's map tell us that an A-Z does not? Kitchin argues that such maps provide us with information regarding memories, interests and social relations. Not so much a cartographers construction but still used and transposed as an 'explicit statement' that are also analogies, metaphors and hypothetical statements of places (Kitchin 1995:3-4). It is in this very important way that cognitive maps facilitate explanation on decision making processes that help to form behaviour (Ibid.:6). The process of cognitive mapping, although using more subjective and sometimes vague methods, they provide a much better insight into behavioural processes and spatial cognition than previous objective methods. Caught up within the lavish detail of the diorama, we can see the process of subjective construction play out in the selection of images, on those that Sohei expands on, and the subject matter signified by these 'places'.
Sohei's work provides us clear examples of his own process of place cognition and we can see it played out in the selectivity of highlighted 'areas of interest'. During his month long walk around London, Sohei must have gone through a process of selection of locations to visit and then another selection process at the time of construction. We can see the results of these events on the canvas themselves. As you look right to left, or East to West, along the picture, you can easily make out the Dome and new financial area of the docklands. The latter is picked out by surrounding images of sky highlighted again by a slight fish-eye lens. Then moving East along the map the old city and the 'Gerkin' stand out in much the same way. City Hall, tower Bridge, the Tate Modern and the London Eye are all picked out as if from any list of London tourist attractions. With Leicester and Trafalgar square, these could be visited and photographed in a day. But as you get past the globally repeated and recognisable images, there are others that would have made the travels to Japan, but with a more subtle presence. Harrods, the BT tower in the north and next to that Hampsted Heath all appear here highlighted and expanded.
Next to the heath lies an interesting selection: at first it is hard to understand what made him take a snap of people walking across a zebra crossing. Such a ubiquitous image seen all across the U.K., but this image is definitely of a 'place', and, as you peer close enough that your nose bumps the glass of the picture, you see people taking photos of people crossing the road, there are four people crossing in a line - The place is Abbey Road in North East London, sight of the famous Beatles album of the same name. Instantly you understand that a young Japanese man would not visit London and not visit this fabled location; a place Londoners only go with their 'out of town' friends. As a method of analysis of this representation, it would be interesting to design a criteria that would describe when an area has been 'marked out', or remembered by Sohei. Maybe we could argue that a certain number of parts (images or shots) being used to make a whole image would do it. By analysing the picture fully, by picking out each location that had been given a specificity of importance, we could build a picture of what the artist may have seen as important and what, by extension and comparison to a more 'accurate map', he may have seen as unimportant. Further explorations into accuracy could also be illuminating. Would there be a correlation between 'line of sight' and number of photos? Is there a link between the distance he walked to a sight and its placement on the map? How much of this image of London is based on his nationality, how much on the fact that is a photographer or even, perhaps from his repeated expansion of London's tallest buildings, its mighty erections, that he is obviously male?
Humour aside there is an important point to be made here. This representation encompasses one person's memory of an intense visit to London. Much more than a map that prides itself on topographical accuracy, this one tells us so much more about how London as it is seen by a tourist, how it is seen as a man from Japan and how it is represented as an artist. This process could even be extended out to form the framework of a research method. After obtaining photographs taken by a representative selection from a given community (auto-photography) you could ask the collect group to place the photographs together to form a map. Their process of doing so, their agreed highlighted areas and ignored points would be enlightening. You could even do this for a neighbouring community with the same photos and track the process in comparison. Images, and certainly multiplicity of images, often provide much easier tools for communication and representation than words.
Conclusion:
In the representation we have, very lightly, explored above London becomes a place of places. The spaces between are nameless blocks of houses, unrecognisable even to the most avid London walker. But every exploration of place, every location that has time, a moment of recognition and distinction of multiplicity of shots, of perspective and of angle, and often surrounded by sky, each of these places are known well as distinct locales. Each one is a tourist sight, a place of 'interest'. We have indicated how one image of London can produce a wealth of information about how the creator, imagined, explored, perceived, remembered and represented something that is inherently un-representatable. Rather than being a contradiction, subjective explorations of place and space, especially though using visual methods, can be very useful in illustrating complex wholes. Further, we have seen that how we see a city is immutably tied up with how we see ourselves. As social scientists we must understand this process of construction to understand what we are looking at and also, how others might view things differently. As the artist states:
"I am deeply committed and passionate about photography. I believe that photography is a way of looking at the self. Rather than thinking about what I can do with photography, I take pictures in a quest to see what I can become through photography." (Gallery Website 2011)
Bibliography:
Hiller, B., (2005), "Between Social Physics and Phenomenology: Explorations towards an Urban synthesis", Proceedings of the 5th International Space Syntax Symposium, Vol. 1, No. 2
Kitchin, R.M., (1994), "Cognitive maps: what are they and why study them?", Journal of environmental psychology, Vol. 14., No., 1., pp:1-19
Lynch, K., (1960), "The Image of the City", Uni. Cambridge Press, UK
Websites:
Michael Hoppen Gallery Website, Retrieved: 29th March 2011, URL: http://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/artist,show,3,161,0,0,0,0,0,0,sohei_nishino.html
Appendix:
This image has been reproduced from the website: (retrieved 04/04/2011)
http://soheinishino.com/en/works/dioramamap/london/index.html
