Floating on the same plane: metropolis, money and the culture of abstraction

This article argues that the emergence of a trans-disciplinary discourse of ‘visual culture’ must be understood as, above all, a constitutively urban phenomenon. More specifically, it is in the historically new form of the capitalist metropolis, as described most famously by Simmel, that the ‘hyper-stimulus’ of modern visual culture has its social and spatial conditions. Paradoxically, however, it is as a result of this that visual culture studies is also intrinsically ‘haunted’ by a certain spectre of the invisible: one rooted in those forms of ‘real abstraction’ which Marx identifies with the commodity and the money form. Considering, initially, the canonical urban visual forms of the collage and the spectacle, these are each read in a certain relation to Simmel’s account of metropolitan life and of the money form, and, through this, to what the author claims are those forms of social and spatial abstraction that must be understood to animate them. Finally, the article returns to the entanglement of the visible and invisible entailed by this, and concludes by making some tentative suggestions about something like a paradoxical urban ‘aesthetic’ of abstraction on such a basis.

Sex, Time and Place: Queer Histories of London, c.1850 to the Present

Sex, Time and Place extensively widens the scope of what we might mean by 'queer London studies'. Incorporating multidisciplinary perspectives – including social history, cultural geography, visual culture, literary representation, ethnography and social studies – this collection asks new questions, widens debates and opens new subject terrain. Featuring essays from an international range of established scholars and emergent voices, the collection is a timely contribution to this growing field. Its essays cover topics such as activist and radical communities and groups, AIDS and the city, art and literature, digital archives and technology, drag and performativity, lesbian London, notions of bohemianism and deviancy, sex reform and research and queer Black history. Going further than the existing literature on Queer London which focuses principally on the experiences of white gay men in a limited time frame, Sex, Time and Place reflects the current state of this growing and important field of study. It will be of great value to scholars, students and general readers who have an interest in queer history, London studies, cultural geography, visual cultures and literary criticism.

‘Don’t look down!’: A short history of rooftopping photography

The article examines the practice known as ‘rooftopping photography’ and its significance for the representation of vertical cities. It begins by charting the historical development of architecture as a viewing platform in the age of the camera, and dwells on the imagery of cityscapes from above that emerged in the inter-war period. Against this background, the essay investigates how rooftopping arose out of the urban exploration movement and became a global trend in the early 2010s. This phenomenon is situated within its wider social and cultural context, and is discussed with reference to the online media discourse that contributed to its public visibility. A set of ideas from the philosophy of photography and visual culture inform the critical analysis of rooftopping photographs: this broad and diverse body of images is examined with a focus on two predominant modes of representation—panoramic and plunging views. The affective responses elicited by so-called ‘vertigo-inducing’ images are discussed through the concept of vicarious kinaesthesia, which offers insights into the nexus between visceral experience and visual representation that lies at the core of rooftopping. By unpacking this interplay, the essay explores a phenomenon that has hitherto been given little scholarly attention and reflects on its broader implications for the relationship between photography and architecture today.