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The Flâneur and the Aesthetic Appropriation of Urban Culture in Mid-19th-century Paris, Mary Gluck Visual representations of the 1840s presented the flâneur in black frock coat and top hat, with a cigar and a walking cane or umbrella in hand, which signified the correct public apparel of the urban bourgeoisie. He was always located on the boulevards, arcades, parks and cafes of the city and that emphasized how unthinkable the flâneur was in interior spaces such as salons and even theaters, unless it was the foyer where he could observe the audience. The essence of the flâneur as a cultural type lay in the fact that his ‘publicness’ was not a neutral empirical fact but a heroic aspiration, conceived in opposition to the pragmatic and moralistic spirit of the age. In Baudelaire’s words, the flâneur was a visionary, in search of ‘poetic and marvelous subjects’ and the ‘epic side of modern life’, not apparent to ordinary mortals. The quintessential flâneur in Baudelaire’s eyes was Hono...

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 tod...