About
urban resilience
and
photography.
The ambiguity.
Much has been written on the conceptual framing of urban resilience and how to operationalize it, engaging all stakeholders, and make it useful for the community. But what is the true meaning of the concept? In 2016, twenty-six definitions of urban resilience were reviewed (*) adding ambiguity to complexity. Ultimately, there is no definition needed if we do not agree on the prerequisites and on the ultimate objective backing the concept: we cannot separate people of their urban living places as both belong to the same process, the urban way of life. Understanding such prerequisites is key as it enables to conceive how our contemporary thinking articulates urban citizens’ relations with their environment, with a one and unique objective: the well-being and well-living of people together.
(*) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288932192_Defining_urban_resilience_A_review
Integrating photography & pedagogy.
Like most artistic approaches, the strength of photography is to lead the way towards unconventional narratives giving a better understanding of the world. Its vision of reality enriches the collective debate, enabling a significant change by shifting the perspective to more open-minded views. It gives the opportunity to understand reality differently, either using our sense of understanding or our sense of emotions or both. It helps to identify the changes, to question possible causes, to reconsider the standard and the positions on which a policy is based. It will be meaningful at one condition: to connect to citizen’s experiences and sensitivity while at the same time making sure that the teaching process can inform them on the threats and challenges related to the concept of urban resilience.
The technique.
As a metaphor of a world where unpredictability is the new norm, argentic paper when exposed to light or digital paper used for installations echoes the complexity of urban spaces. The argentic paper darkening when exposed to daylight will depend on the brightness, the UV index, and on the refraction angle of the light on the paper surface. This multi-parameter process recalls the intertwined causes of social drivers and the fate of hazards in vulnerable environments. Some parts of the argentic paper will be fully or partly treated with fixing or developer agents at given dilution and time, while others will be left untreated. When the darkness level is appropriate, the daylight exposure is stopped, but the darkening process itself never terminates and will evolve with varying intensity depending on the environment. A way to question the resilience of urban spaces.
