Addressing Studio Creative Practice | VA505

In his essay The Painter of Modern Life (1863), Charles Baudelaire talks about what an artist should be and what a 'man of crowd' is. Baudelaire says that an artist must be "the spiritual citizen of the universe" with an intense curiosity and interest in crowds. He uses the example of an anonymous "Monsieur G." (the painter) whom he claims possesses all of the necessary qualities of a modern artist and says that Monsieur G. is not an artist but rather is a man of the world. “By ‘man of the world’, I mean a man of the whole world, a man who understands the world and the mysterious and legitimate reasons behind all its customs; by ‘artist’, I mean a specialist, a man tied to his palette like a serf to the soil.”   In the article The Flâneur and the Aesthetic Appropriation of Urban Culture in Mid-19th-century Paris , Mary Gluck talks about the artist-flâneur who represents the prototype of the contemporary flâneur and why Baudelaire regards him as the c

Rethinking the Flâneur: Flânerie and the Senses, Aimée Boutin It is useful to distinguish the ‘popular’ from the ‘avant-garde’ flâneur: whereas the popular flâneur emerged in panoramic literature and the commercial press, the avant-garde flâneur is more closely associated with innovative artists. Charles Baudelaire identified the flâneur with the artist and the imagination, against a scientific conception of modernity. In contrast, Honoré de Balzac had conceived of flânerie as a synthesis of empiricism, creativity, and science in a well-known passage of Physiologie du marriage. In ‘Le Peintre de la vie moderne’, Baudelaire compares the flâneur to Poe’s ‘man of the crowd’. As he who chooses to dwell at the centre of the movement of the crowd but who resists being sucked into it, he remains disengaged, masterful, princely, invisible, superior, and omniscient; but, as Krueger demonstrates in her rereading of this passage, the man of the crowd not only observes the spectacle but he sme

John Thomson (1837 - 1921) was one of the first photographers to travel to the Far East, documenting the people, landscapes and artefacts of eastern cultures. Upon returning home(England), he turned his attention to the people of London and collaborated with socialist journalist Adolphe Smith. Together they photographed and interviewed people they met on the streets of London – including locksmiths, flower sellers, shoeblacks and musicians – building up a detailed picture of the London poor at the time. The photographs and accompanying detailed descriptions were published in monthly as Street Life in London in 1876 and 1877. The photographs record the plight of the poor in Victorian London. This is considered an early pioneering example of documentary photojournalism .        Professor of Photography, Mehmet Bayhan, describes Ara Güler as: “Looking for social layers and traces as much as any sociologist.” Ara Güler says: “We collect the visual history of today’s earth. To me,

First sold in 1925, the Leica was the first commercially successful camera to use 35 mm film. Its compactness and bright viewfinder matched to lenses of quality helped photographers move through busy streets and capture fleeting moments. Henri Cartier-Bresson acquired the Leica camera with 50 mm lens in Marseilles that would accompany him for many years. The anonymity that the small camera gave him in a crowd or during an intimate moment was essential in overcoming unnatural behavior of those who were aware of being photographed. (He enhanced his anonymity by painting all shiny parts of the Leica with black paint.) The Leica opened up the ability to capture the world in its actual state of movement and transformation. Henri Cartier-Bresson: I went to Marseille. A small allowance enabled me to get along, and I worked with enjoyment. I had just discovered the Leica. It became the extension of my eye, and I have never been separated from it since I found it. I prowled the streets a

S treet photography is a genre of photography that records everyday life in a public place for artistic purposes. The publicness of the setting enables the photographer to take candid pictures of strangers, often without their knowledge. Street photographers do not necessarily have a social purpose in their mind, they focus on people’s behaviors and they make very detailed observation on people. According to famous street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson: In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject, the little human detail can become a leitmotiv. While observing people, street photographers act like a flaneur . Susan Sontag states: Gazing on other people's reality with curiosity, with detachment, with professionalism, the ubiquitous photographer operates as if that activity transcends class interests, as if its perspective is universal. In fact, photography first comes into its own as an extension of the eye of the middle-class flaneur, whose sensibility was so ac

People watching is the act of observing different kind of people and their interactions, usually without their knowledge. Some people do people watching as a subconscious activity they engage in everyday life without even realizing, it is usually done when you have leisure time at outside. You do not need a conclusion while watching people subconsciously but, mostly the people-watcher comes up with assumption about the person who is been watched, depending on her/his appearance. The people-watcher portray as a narrator, he/she improvises stories in their mind. Daniel Arnold for The New York Times Image For some people, “people watching” is a hobby which you do for amusement. In that case, it is not an unconscious behavior, people can go and sit in front of window in a café in order to do people watching but the observation does not have to make an inference. This definition of “people watching” leads me to the word “flâneur”. On the other hand, people watching is a great way for inspir