Lysol Lakes, and Other Photographs

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov Series VII: Social Sciences and Law, 2022

During the state of emergency in Romania, in the first part of 2020, we asked 30 participants from the urban and rural environment in Brasov County to take photographs of what living in isolation means. To our surprise, many of the photographs we received illustrate landscapes that seem to have represented a therapeutic resource, seem to have contributed to maintaining a state of well-being of the participants during quarantine. With the aid of these images, we drew up a visual essay that reflects the particular importance the environment, especially nature and the city, had in a crisis for our participants, generated by the traumatizing experience of isolation.

Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted nearly every facet of our world, including some of the most fundamental forms of human behavior and our conception of the social. Everyday activities now pose a risk to individuals and to society as a whole. This radical shift in how we live has produced a wide array of material responses across the globe. This photo essay seeks to open up dialogue and ask questions about the numerous forms of COVID-19 materiality and altered landscapes that the authors have chronicled,

Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted nearly every facet of our world, including some of the most fundamental forms of human behavior and our conception of the social. Everyday activities now pose a risk to individuals and to society as a whole. This radical shift in how we live has produced a wide array of material responses across the globe. This photo essay seeks to open up dialogue and ask questions about the numerous forms of COVID-19 materiality and altered landscapes that the authors have chronicled,

Cultures of wellbeing: methods, place, policy, 2016

This book chapter focuses on one aspect of my doctoral fieldwork: the use of participatory photography and photo-elicitation interviews within a mine-affected community in Cambodia. It documents some of the trials, tribulations and triumphs of utilising a participatory and visual approach in the assessment of wellbeing. Ultimately it concludes that participatory photography provides a three-dimensional approach to discussions about what people need for life to be good that encapsulates the material, relational and subjective dimensions of wellbeing, as well as people’s past, present and future aspirations, all in the space of one image.

Intermedialité, 2020

The efficacy of Lake Ontario is explored in relation to the Canada/US border, which is not only a physical feature in much of the country, but contributes to the geographic imaginary of Canada. This offers a context to discuss two art installations by Bonnie Devine and Nicole Clouston who both engage with the integrated, material and lively watershed of Lake Ontario. Vital materiality literature and indigenous cosmologies will be engaged with to show how the installations reaffirm the efficacy and physicality of Lake Ontario as a resistant space and place in relation to the colonial nation state of Canada with its arbitrary borders.

Visual Studies, 2024

There is no denying that the coronavirus pandemic changed our lives. Much has been said, reported, studied and written about its social, economic, political and health implications. What did the pandemic look like? How did and has it influenced urban spatial and material designs along with various mobilities? Drawing on visual ethnographic field data collected from March 2020 to November 2022 in metropolitan Chicago and in Washington, D.C., I examine the materiality, spatiality and visual aspects of the pandemic and the remnants that may have long-term attachments to urban life. To do so, I discuss what I call pandemic spaces – spaces produced through rules, designs, material, and reformulated use in response to and during a pandemic – to show how the COVID-19 pandemic and the concurrent racial justice protests (which happened globally) visually and materially altered urban spaces along short- and long-term trajectories. In doing so, I advance the growing scholarship on the pandemic’s impact and how its infusion in urban spaces requires consideration for urban studies moving forward.

Sophia journal, Volume 7, No. 1 -Landscapes of Care: the emergency of landscapes of care in extreme territories, 2022

“Architecture in its broadest sense provides shelter indispensable to the continuation of human life and survival. This is evidently a form of care. Yet historically, architecture has not been considered a form of caring labor. Despite this fundamental function of architecture to provide protection for humans from sun, wind, snow or rain, and to give the support necessary for maintaining the vital functions of everyday living, the idea of the architect is linked to autonomy and independent genius rather than connectedness, dependency, social reproduction and care giving.” Elke Krasny1 “(...) architects have no time to lose to work on alternative models that offer paths to reach social equity within the continued intense metropolitanization of settlement structures. Given the changing nature of societies, more differentiated forms of cohabitation; greater demand for closer spatial relations of work-living-recreation; the renewal of urban farming; decentralized forms of harvesting renewable energy; leaner and smaller production facilities; all these transformations should lead to a change in the conventional zoning of uses; to a search for building and urban typologies that may be grafted on as much as possible to existing fabric and that will yet liberate future generations from the burden of the suburban era.” Wilfried Wang2 With this 7th Volume of Sophia Journal we initiate our third thematic cycle “Landscapes of Care”, addressing contemporary photography and visual practices that focus on how architecture understood in a wide sense can help to heal a broken planet3. The concept of landscapes of care has increasingly been adopted by diverse areas of study, from health geography to the arts and architecture4. It allows us to understand architecture, city and territory as living and inclusive organisms5, constituted by multifaceted landscapes with complex social and organisational spatialities6, as well as exploring the concepts of space and place for care within a transdisciplinary research environment7. Significant changes are taking place in diverse physical spaces all around the world and the world is growing in complexity as Daniel Innerarity8 points out. For this complex world of post-politics ideals, we need ambitious visions for the future and at the same time to trigger operational paths that are able to reform society, in a creative and collaborative manner, towards a better world. (...) References Elke Krasny, “Architecture and Care,” in Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet, edited by Angelika Fitz, Elke Krasny and Architekturzentrum Wien, 0 (2019) The MIT Press, 33. Wilfried Wang, On the Increasing Irrelevance of Context in the Generation of Form; or, why there is no longer a difference between an urn and a chamber pot, Specificity, OASE, (2008) (76), 91–105, Retrieved from https://www.oasejournal.nl/ en/Issues/76/OnTheIncreasingIrrelevanceOfContextInTheGenerationOfForm (...)

Tourism and Hospitality Research , 2020

During the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown of 2020, freedom to travel was restricted but there was a remarkable increase in webcam-travel, which can be defined as visiting place-based webcams online. Media commentators suggested that this technology was being used to connect with places and nature; an observation mirrored by webcam hosting organisations. This study examines the surge in popularity of these webcams which reflect a wide range of sites – often natural environments. It goes on to explore the attributes of webcam-travel to explain its rise during lockdown, primarily by employing an online questionnaire. It reveals that this experience is marked by feelings of freedom, nostalgia, and connection – each of which offers potential wellness benefits. Respondents exercised their freedom through these virtual portals to connect to nature, the outdoors, and places that they associated with happy memories pre-lockdown. This article also suggests that webcam-travel links to an increased likelihood to physically visit these sites in the future. Therefore, this research may be relevant to both academics and practitioners with an interest in the experience economy. To access visit: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1467358420963370

Planning Theory & Practice, 2020

In this Issue of Interface we bring you a unique project as one way of responding to this extraordinary historical period, marked by the global pandemic brought by COVID19. The wellspring of this project was the confluence of two streams of experience for us in the Interface team, as the pandemic and its concomitant economic crisis began to unfold. The first was a deep feeling of ambivalence toward continuing with 'Interface business as usual'. We were immediately conscious of the importance of relaxing deadlines and rethinking how to bring these particular pages of this journal together during such a time. Like so many plans and trajectories for people everywhere around the world-from the tiny and everyday to the huge and consequential-we felt the need to pause and reconsider. Could we really chase contributors for copy under such circumstances? Besides, there were our own personal challenges, individual paralyses and low energy levels with which to contend. Business as usual certainly did not feel right. Second, was a deep apprehension about the rush (and the feeling of pressure to rush) toward pronouncements and predictions, forecasts of impact and diagnoses of futures about what 'These Unprecedented Times' might mean. Beyond an immediate concern for a properly grounded ethical practice of care and sustained critique about the things we have always cared about, we felt cautious about using Interface to bring together debates 'about' the pandemic or its impacts. It just all felt too early to say and that even an educated guess about what might matter could look like an offbeat stab in the dark by the time of publication. Moreover, the ability to provide a written response falls unevenly on those with capacity to do so in such circumstances, further privileging some voices over others. So much was moving so fast, it seemed like slowing down and pausing might produce a more hopeful and ethical response. And so the idea of this small intervention in strange times was born. We put out an open call in as many planning forums, networks and platforms as possible and asked people to send in a photograph of "their neighbourhood". There was no prescription as to content or focus. We asked that contributors simply take a photograph during or near to the week of 4-9 June 2020 of somewhere in "your neighbourhood", whatever that may mean, and send it in with a short caption. The response was wonderful as you will see on the pages that follow. We do not offer any commentary on these images. They simply stand as a marker of a particular moment, captured in myriad individual moments of observation, curated as a collective here. Enjoy.

2022 IEEE VIS Arts Program (VISAP)