CfP: Making Cities Visible. Global Perspectives on Urban Image-Production and -Circulation (19th-20th centuries)

Ever since the age of printmaking, cities have been centres for the production and distribution of images of all kinds - not only for local, but also for translocal and transnational markets and publics. However, the late 19th century marked a turning point in several respects as photography revolutionised the production and distribution of photo-realistic images. Since then, we have been living in a society of images. This panel examines the specific urban imprint of this global development toward modern visual cultures, which took shape in different ways at different places. We consider the changing ways in which cities became represented and looked at with the industrialization of image production and circulation, taking into account the integrating effects of international visual discourse as well as local peculiarities. Our panel explicitly invites studies on non-Western and peripheral/non-metropolitan urban contexts so to contribute to global historians’ challenging of Western-centred narratives of ‘urban modernity’.

The panel’s six to seven papers explore the relationship between urbanity and visibility in Europe and beyond. They engage with the multifarious ways in which urban photographic iconography shaped (visual) discourses on (urban) modernity. In doing so, it also examines the different forms of invisibility that formed the flipside of hypervisibility, which often centred on specific forms of particularly metropolitan urban life. We take into special account that representations of modern urban space emerged in a context of changing gender identities and, especially, of transforming ideas of femininity that were embodied through an increased female mobility to and through cities worldwide.

Among the questions the papers may address are:
What conditions and contexts did cities provide to shape this new imaging of the world?
Which (urban) actors shaped this development?
Which specific status did metropoles earn in this co-construction process of urban modernity and visual discourses?
How did other places beyond the metropolises foster the mediazation of the present?
What democratizing and which socially marginalizing effects did this process have?
Did the urban contexts of image production shape a specific urban bias in the description of society, which has persisted as a pattern of interpretation right up to the present day?

Paper proposals are to be submitted by October 22 via the official conference website (https://www.eauhbarcelona2026.eu/) by choosing Session 62 Main Session. ‘Making Cities Visible. Global Perspectives on Urban Image-Production and Circulation (19th and 20th centuries)’