MARTIN KOLLAR

BRUCE DAVIDSON - SUBWAY

first published by Aperture in 1986

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

BOB MAZZER

JANE n
LOUISE WILSON

In his "Theaters" series, Sugimoto would leave the camera's shutter open for extended periods of time while photographing the inside of movie theaters. This exposure technique results in a glowing, ethereal image that often blurs the details of the space, giving it a dreamlike, surreal quality.

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO

- His process often involves layering exposures, playing with contrast, and selectively masking parts of the image to create that surreal effect.

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- Attempts to reduce subjects to their most essential, pure forms.
This reductionism often strips away the unnecessary, allowing the viewer to experience the sublime nature of the subject without distraction.

- His photographs are shot with precise framing, highlighting not just the animals but also the environment of the diorama, giving the viewer a sense of looking into a constructed world.

- These staged settings are intended to blur the line between reality and illusion, as they are inherently artificial but appear lifelike.
(Exploring the tension between " real" and "artificial" ... what makes it real, and what destroys that belief ?) 

His photos focus on political contexts, public spaces, and how people interact with the world around them, often capturing moments of uncertainty or instability.

INVISIBLE CITIES - Novel by ITALO CALVINO

Invisible Cities is a novel by Italo Calvino, first published in 1972.
The book is framed* as a conversation between the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan*, and Marco Polo. The majority of the book consists of brief prose poems describing 55 fictitious cities that are narrated by Polo, many of which can be read as commentary on culture, language, time, memory, death, or human experience generally.
Invisible cities ia an archetypal example of the travel literature genre, ("The Travels of Marco Polo"), The original 13th-century travelogue shares with Calvino's novel the brief, often fantastic accounts of the cities Polo claimed to have visited, along with descriptions of the city's inhabitants, notable imports and exports, and stories by Polo about the region.

Each city Polo describes represents more than just a physical place—it embodies abstract ideas or emotions, such as time, memory, love, desire, or isolation. The cities are not necessarily meant to be realistic or geographically grounded, but rather symbolic reflections of the human condition.

Calvino plays with the tension between the real and the imagined. While the cities Polo describes may seem fantastical, they often have a grounding in reality, serving as metaphors for the way we understand and experience the world. In this way, the cities serve as a way to explore philosophical questions about existence and perception.

*FRAME STORY/ NEST STORY, STORY WITHIN THE STORY, INTERCALATION ...
is a literary technique that serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, where an introductory or main narrative sets the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories. The frame story leads readers from a first story into one or more other stories within it.

KUBLAI KHAN

IVAN BAAN