Urban representation in photographic books: Emotional city mapping through the innocence of objects

Abstract

Cities’ representation has become increasingly limited, disregarding thousands of years of complex cartographies–between the sentimental and the documental. This chapter attempts to explore a particular photography book: a catalogue which addresses the representation of place in a rather unconventional way. The Innocence of Objects is part of a triangle, together with Orhan Pamuk’s novel and the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul. The novel-catalogue is not a sub-product of the museum; on the contrary, it is at its origin. While the Museum of Innocence is the architecture of a sequence of scenes that build up space from the reconstruction of careful compositional structures that generate new relationships, The Innocence of Objects displays them as still-lifes, where story and history merge. Through photography, the displayed compositions—or artificial landscapes—build up a panoramic cityscape, an urban identity beyond its physical form and specific time, that encourages a deeper understanding of the multiple and stratified meanings of the city.