Urban vernacular landscapes: toward a visual pedagogy of the ordinary

ABSTRACT

Although many social scientists employ visual media in their research and teaching, the connection between the ‘visual’ and the ‘social science’ is often tenuous. Photographs often are reserved for illustrating textual concepts, or making standard findings more interesting to readers than the normal textual exposition in tables, pie charts, graphs, or other methods of data visualization. In my research about urban lives and cultures, I have extensively photographed what John Brinckerhoff Jackson called ‘vernacular landscapes.’ Although photojournalists, as well as documentary and street photographers, have also engaged in similar image capturing practices, as opposed to their more aesthetic and artistic accomplishments, I have tried to firmly connect my images to normal social science theories and methods. This visually enhanced essay will describe, discuss, and give examples from my own photographic studies of urban vernacular landscapes over several decades and across the globe. It is hoped that in this autobiographical process, the difference between artistic and scientific photography as to theories of class, globalization, race, and other social issues will be made clearer.

KEYWORDS:

• art
• photography
• social science
• urban
• vernacular landscape

Acknowledgements

Support for some of the photographic research presented in this essay was provided by the PSC\CUNY Faculty Research Awards, Kosciuszko Foundation, Polish Ministry of National Education, Murray Koppelman Foundation, J. William Fulbright Foreign Commission, University of Western Australia, University of Rome, La Sapienza, Rome, Italy, and the University Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples, Italy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Jerome Krase

Jerome Krase, Emeritus and Murray Koppelman Professor at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York is an activist-scholar working with public and private agencies regarding urban community issues. His Bachelor’s Degree is from Indiana University and his PhD from New York University. He researches, lectures, photographs, and writes about urban life and culture globally. A sample of his books include Ethnic Landscapes in an Urban World (2006), edited with Ray Hutchison, Seeing Cities Change: Local Culture and Class (2012), Race, Class, and Gentrification in Brooklyn, with Judith N. DeSena (2016), Diversity in Local Contexts, edited with Zdenek Uhurek (2017), The Status of Interpretation in Italian American Studies, Gentrification around the World, Volume 1: Gentrifiers and the Displaced, and Volume 2: Innovative Approaches, Co-Editor with Judith N. DeSena (2020). He co-edits Urbanities and serves on the editorial boards of Visual Studies and the Journal of Video Ethnography. Professor Krase is an officer of ProBonoDesign Inc, and is active in the American, European, and International Sociological Associations, Commission on Urban Anthropology IUAES, International Urban Symposium, H-NET Humanities on Line, and the International Visual Sociology Association.