Urban inequalities? Let’s delve into photobooks together

How can photobooks shed light on urban inequalities? Under this year’s RC21 theme, “Inequalities and the City,” seven researchers from the University of Vienna’s Research Platform “The Challenges of Urban Futures” and beyond came together to discuss what photobooks can reveal about the issue. 

In conversation with talkingphotobooks.net, they explain how the photobooks they selected enable them to problematize urban inequalities in research and teaching.

From early Viennese street photography to documentary images of Munich’s emerging graffiti scene in the 1980s and quasi-chronophotographic views of a Dakar construction site the selected photobooks illuminate—sometimes more, sometimes less directly—the lived experiences and imaginaries of urban (in)equalities. 

Talks: Alexa Färber with Yvonne Franz, Yuri Kazepov, Petr Kondeko Kubala, Cornelia Nietz, Josefa Stiegler, Pierre Wenzel

Since 2017 the blog talkingphotobooks.net aims to examine and highlight the power and appeal of photobooks in relation to the city’s tangibility.

This chapter of talkingphotobooks.net was made possible with the support of
The Research Platform „The Challenges of Urban Futures“, University of Vienna 

Institute of European Ethnology, University of Vienna
studio audio-visual research, Institute of European Ethnology, University of Vienna

Concept & Direction: Alexa Färber, Momo E. Hontebeyrie, Daniel Kunz
Camera/Sound & Postproduction: Daniel Kunz
Production & Postproduction: Momo E. Hontebeyrie
Graphic design: Alessia Scuderi