The flâneur in crisis: arbitrary images in an ungraspable landscape

Abstract

This article reflects on the relationship between photography and flânerie, questioning whether the conditions artists encounter today in large cities are the same as those that allowed Charles Baudelaire, in 19th-century Paris, to embody the figure of the flâneur. It also takes flânerie as a reference to outline a series of exclusions imposed by the city regarding the right to walk and to gaze. The text analyzes recent photographic experiences in which the acts of walking and photographing follow strict instructions previously defined by the artists. We propose the hypothesis that these works are symptomatic of an environment increasingly hostile to the contemplative wandering of flânerie—whether due to the acceleration of movement or the lack of sufficient distance to take in the landscape. On one hand, the methodical and arbitrary nature of these experiments highlights the collapse of any possibility of romanticizing the city. On the other, it represents a possible effort to resist the inertial momentum imposed by this environment.