Watching, Waiting: The Photographic Representation of Empty Places

Book info: Watching, Waiting: The Photographic Representation of Empty Places (Paperback, 312 pages) – Leuven University Press, 2023. Language: English.

In the aftermath of Covid-19, the subject of 'empty places' has gained renewed topicality and resonance. Watching, Waiting presents a collection of essays, both photographic and written, that brings emptiness into interdisciplinary focus as an object of study that extends beyond the present. The contributors approach the specific interrelationships of photography and place through emptiness by considering historical and contemporary material in equal measure. Drawing on architecture, anthropology, sociology, and public health, among other fields, they provide insights into geographically and temporally diverse production models of empty places and their corresponding complex and sensitive global and local relations, while also tackling the ethics of behaviour and protests that unfold within them. The book's chapters, both visual and scholarly essays, cover areas that range widely both thematically and geographically, spanning static film footage of Nicosia's buffer zone, protest photographs in the wake of Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Bristol, staged images from the University of Zagreb's ethnological archives, historic landscape and architectural photography, aerial shots of covid-19 mass graves in Brazil, photos of artificially built field hospitals and quarantine rooms during the pandemic, and images of empty airports at night. Through still and moving images, Watching, Waiting examines the photographic aestheticization of emptiness, existing stereotypes of 'empty places', and transformations of human experiences.

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Contributors: Ruth Baumeister (Aarhus School of Architecture), Isabelle Catucci da Silva (Federal University of Paraná), Stella Fatović-Ferenčić (Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts), Martin Kuhar (Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts), Catlin Langford (Centre for Contemporary Photography), Jessie Martin (University of West London), Stuart Moore (University of the West of England), Luca Nostri (Independent Artist Photographer), Kayla Parker (University of Plymouth), Bec Rengel (University of the West of England), Tihana Rubić (University of Zagreb), Klaudija Sabo (University of Klagenfurt), Anna Schober (University of Klagenfurt), Elke Katharina Wittich (Leibniz University Hannover)

Sandra Križić Roban is a senior research adviser in tenure at the Institute of Art History, and assistant professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, both in Zagreb.

Ana Šverko is a senior research adviser at the Institute of Art History - Cvito Fisković Centre, and assistant professor at the Study of Architecture and Urban Planning, both in Split.