Israeli Lens Magazine Israeli Lens #4 - Urban Photography | Page 8

PHOTOGRAPHING THE URBAN LANDSCAPE The urban landscape can be viewed both as a series of structures and edifices more or less organised by human action and as a panorama of social and cultural histories framing our present and inscribing our past. Seen in this way, '....the conurbation becomes one huge archaeological site as the city reveals its inner self through a continuous process of urban renewal and revitalisation in which the very innards of the landscape are exposed and delayered like a vast 8 http://israeliartmarket.com anatomical dissection' (Ron McCormick, Archaeologies : Tracing History in the Urban Landscape, 1998). The challenge for urban landscape photography is to not only record the physical manifestations of this relentless process, but also to make visible the underlying social and cultural forces which ultimately determine their form and meaning. The enduring power of photography lies in the acceptance of its images as credible documentary records with