Since the birth of photography as a technology, art-form and social practice urban-scapes and urban lives continue to provide the backdrop or focus for photographers and social scientists alike. Further, the frontiers delimiting photography as a ‘discipline’ or ‘practice’ and social science research have become increasingly fuzzy, as visual ethnography and sociology has developed as sub-genres and as photographers become sociologists and anthropologists (and vice versa) and draw on scientific literature for inspiration in their image making. Diverse photographic genres (portraits, street, documentary, ‘found’ images) and methods now join the assimilation of other visual materials and methods within qualitative social research, the inclusion of photos within urban research can take various forms (Rose 2016 ; Roberts 2011; Becker 1974). Yet, while a thriving literature exists on how photos may be interpreted, how relations between photographs and the field can be differently conceived, and the potential ‘agency’ of photos within social lives, the relations between the social sciences, art and photography remain under-unexplored (Cuny et al. 2020). In much social science research, images continue to be relegated to a purely illustrative role and their analytical potential overlooked. Surprising little attention has been given to the question of how making and/or working with photographs may offer particular insights into ethnographic explorations of urban transformations.

In the presence of Claire Bullen, Manuel Dieterich, Bani Gill, Carlos Nazario Mora Duro and Franca Webel (University of Tübingen) and Oriane Gerard (Aix-Marseille University), Amandine Hoelken (University of Strasbourg), Damián O. Martínez (University of Murcia) and Jérôme Tadié (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Paris/Nice), the day-long workshop was conceived as a way for researchers to reflect upon the above and to think more deeply and critically about (how) can photography help us better understand the urban.

Presentations of each participants of one or two photographs taken from their field-sites served as the basis for discussions of ethical, methodological or epistemological implications (consent, power-relations, representation, material conditions of image production, aesthetic choices, materials, etc., insights into urban social relations, urban changing forms, the urban ethnographic endeavour…).

Workshop participants are now working towards an on-line academic journal, while we hope to continue these discussions on working with photographs within urban research during future G-TURN Critical Conversations.

If you would like to take part in this discussion, please contact us: jan-paul.spyraspam prevention@student.uni-tuebingen.de 

The name of the exhibition was Über/Sehen. Bildregime der Migration (About/Look. Image Regimes of Migration). In German, über and sehen mean about and look, but together, übersehen means to overlook or to ignore something. The title thus plays with the polysemy of migration: looking at migration, the overexposure, and omission of it.

The installation consisted of pictures, explanations, and audiovisual material to reflect on the social production of migration-related images. Who made these illustrations? In what social and political context was this material created, and what was its intentionality? To answer these questions, the museum highlighted issues such as the manipulation of images, the “risk” of victimisation, and the focus on “social and political alternatives.”

The picture of a migrant mother, taken by the photographer Dorothea Lange in 1936, was particularly appealing. Our guide, a young woman from Ukraine who is also an artist in Duisburg, explained the dilemma of this famous image. It became an icon of the Great Depression in the US and was seen as a referent of Dorothea Lange’s work. Less information however has been provided about the identity of the mother and children in the visual material. Did the photographer get permission to take this picture, and what was the story of Florence Thompson, the woman in the photograph who seems to be protecting her children from the camera siege?

Another fascinating instance during the exhibition was a series of images about migration and refugees created by artificial intelligence.

It is amazing the quality of illustrations that AI can produce following the commands and narratives of technology users. One of these images was of a crowded ship in the middle of a raging sea. The dramatic scene of contemporary human mobilities –mainly from the South to the global North, seems to emulate the biblical episode of Noah’s Ark.

The visit concluded with a showing of the documentary Leaving Greece (2013), followed by a discussion with the director Anna Brass. The film follows the story of three young Afghan refugees stranded in Greece, waiting for the chance to achieve the German dream. That is, to be accepted to enter Germany and pursue their goals of work, start a family, or improve their living conditions. The migration issue is not only a political order but a social conflict with human consequences.

The next day, we had the opportunity to be guided through the Marxloh district by Dr Polina Manolova, currently based at the University of Essen-Duisburg. We observed how urban space is a configuration of social tensions and collective organisation, materialised in the public sphere. This observation was reinforced later with her G-TURN lecture “Mobility, labour and biopolitics: Notes from Duisburg’ Urban Zones of Exception”.

Marxloh is generally stigmatised in the media as a no-go area associated with crime and unemployment. Despite the considerable deindustrialisation of the wider region, the neighbourhood is still shaped by the steel industry. Moreover, the locality is characterised by its cultural diversity. Currently, 76% of Marxloh's residents have a migrant background. Mostly, people with Turkish roots, but also populations from Bulgaria, Romania, Syria, and Poland.

The migrant mosaic is reflected in the configuration of the urban social space. Around the Marxloh neighbourhood, one can find businesses run by immigrant entrepreneurs: delicious restaurants, shops selling Turkish and Bulgarian products, and bright and flashy wedding shops.

The religious diversity of the area was evident in the presence of religious centres, such as the Central Mosque in Duisburg, one of the largest in Germany.

Of course, we cannot ignore the marginalisation and resistance that affects multicultural contexts. These social conflicts are bound up with the political and economic context, both nationally and globally.

As we walked through the streets, we came across a group of buildings that had been evacuated by the police, claiming that the structure was dangerous for its occupants. Residents of different nationalities had been evicted in a single day, without being offered a new home or adequate assistance. According to Dr Manolova, these systematic expulsions represent ethnic and spatial cleansing practices carried out by state authorities. Meanwhile, neighbourhood groups and organisations, e.g., Stolipinovo, created by Bulgarian Turkish migrants, have started to organise themselves to resist these displacement practices.

Before departing back to Tübingen on Sunday morning, 5 November, we noted the large letters #DUISBURG IST ECHT (Duisburg is authentic) on the paved plaza before the main station, reflecting efforts to convert the city from its industrial past.

As is common in many cities worldwide, the urban past seems to be giving way to the object of desire for tourism and gentrification. The revitalisation of blighted urban areas aims to attract wealthier visitors, residents, and businesses. However, this process can involve the detriment of the city's historical and cultural identity and the displacement of older residents due to the costs associated with gentrification.

We closed our ethnographic visit with a reading of C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination (1959) on the crowded train on our return journey.

“It is true, as psychoanalysts continually point out, that people do often have 'the increasing sense of being moved by obscure forces within themselves which they are unable to define.' But... 'Man's chief danger' today lies in the unruly forces of contemporary society itself... its pervasive transformations of the very 'nature' of man and the conditions and aims of his life.”

There is no doubt that our sociological imagination has been greatly stimulated by our visit to Duisburg. It has allowed us to perceive the “obscure forces” Mills refers to. Those that go beyond the psyche of individuals and are situated in the complex and interconnected contemporary society.

1. Racial desegregation of residential areas. The key driver of racial desegregation has been the deracialisation of middle and upper income occupation types (Crankshaw 2022). The fact that once-‘white’ parts of cities are now among the most racially mixed neighbourhoods can be interpreted as transformation insofar as white people no longer monopolise these advantageous neighbourhoods. And given that apartheid argued that people of different races could not share living environments because they would descend into conflict, the largely peaceful and normalised racial integration of middle and upper class suburbs does indeed stand as a remarkable transformation. Yet many, if not most, urban residents do not live in racially integrated neighbourhoods because they cannot afford to do so. The extent of racial desegregation is therefore governed by the unequal occupation and income structure of urban residents and uneven house prices.
2. Class desegregation of residential areas. While the racial desegregation of once racially exclusive neighbourhoods has been extensive, they remain relatively segregated by income (Ballard and Hamann 2021). Middle and upper class suburbs may be somewhat racially desegregated but the main housing stock is not accessible to anyone other than salaried professionals. Therefore while it might be said that white people no longer have a monopoly over advantageous neighbourhoods, middle and upper income earners do. In 2019, the City of Johannesburg implemented an inclusionary housing policy that obliges developers to include a component of more affordable units in their developments. The fact that this has not happened across the country and much earlier is a missed opportunity for those who argue that greater proximity between different incomes is desirable. State housing projects projects are premised on the desire to incorporate different income levels but only integrate welfare, semi-subsidized and entry level bonded houses. Some informal land occupations have reduced the proximity between rich and poor, although this has not produced integrated neighbourhoods per se, it has reduced the scale of segregation.
3. Densification. Spatial transformation has – in some policies – taken on the goal of densification. The Corridors of Freedom initiative in Johannesburg sought to densify along transit corridors. This initiative invoked dimensions 1 and 2, expressing a vision that rich and poor, black and white would live side by side (Ballard, Dittgen, Harrison and Todes 2017). It also invoked a broader desire to avoid the inefficiencies of urban sprawl. Densification-based strategies argue that more intensive use of land optimises bulk infrastructure, transport, and the opportunities generated through agglomeration effects. Mechanisms for containing urban sprawl include urban boundaries, although these are not always supported politically or enforced bureaucratically.
4. Investment in working class spaces. The fourth and fifth dimensions of spatial transformation do not – in themselves – prioritise the rearrangement of people across the urban scale (to create race or class integration or a densified core). They accept that the urban structure is path dependent and cannot easily be undone. The fourth dimension of spatial transformation is the investment in working class spaces where they are in order to ensure that they function better as living environments for those who live in them. The creation of ‘unicities’ (integrated municipalities) during the demarcation process of the 1990s allowed for revenue collected in wealthy areas to be invested in more deprived sections of the city. As a result townships such as Soweto have transformed markedly. The provision of new housing for working class occupants often alongside historical townships is a further form of investment. Working class residents have themselves invested extensively in their own accommodation and infrastructure. A key limit of this investment has been the extent of unemployment in working class neighbourhoods. The Gauteng Provincial Government has embarked on a drive to support township economies, for example by procuring goods and services in townships, in order to reduce the ‘spatial mismatch’ (between where people live and economic centres). However this this does not create new economic demand. Perhaps the most profound unravelling of investments in working class spaces is the collapse of electricity and water provision which deeply compromises the ability of these neighbourhoods to function as sites of social reproduction and economic production.
5. Connectivity. The priority for the fifth dimension of spatial transformation is to recreate improved connectivity so that any resident of the city may be able to get around it easily, cheaply and safely in order to look for jobs, go to work, or indeed go to school. It offers to bridge the spatial mismatch by opening up the greater city to all who live in it (in contrast to dimension four which seeks to localise opportunity in working class spaces). Extensive investment has occurred in bus rapid transit, metropolitan and regional bus services, rapid rail, passenger rail and taxi recapitalisation. Yet Gauteng has yet to achieve an integrated ticketing system and many transport systems are limping along at best. Freedom of movement is also hampered by the enclosure of neighbourhoods and entire suburbs through fortification.

Each of these dimensions of spatial transformation can contribute in specific ways to the achievement of spatial justice. However there is a limit to the extent to which spatial transformations can achieve spatial justice, and there is a limit to how much can be achieved under each of these five dimensions in the context of persistent acute income inequality. 

References

Crankshaw, Owen (2022) Urban Inequality: Theory Evidence and Method in Johannesburg. London: Zed.

Ballard, Richard, Romain Dittgen, Philip Harrison and Alison Todes (2017) ‘Megaprojects and Urban Visions: Johannesburg’s Corridors of Freedom and Modderfontein’ Transformation 75.

Richard Ballard and Christian Hamann (2021) ‘Socio-Economic Segregation and Income Inequality in the City of Johannesburg’ In Maarten van Ham, Tiit Tammaru, Ruta Ubarevičienė and Heleen Janssen (eds) Urban Socio-Economic Segregation and Income Inequality. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. pp 91-109.