The Third City

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We no longer define our cities by the walls that once encased them. Over time, the structures of the networks we use to organise our activities have changed, and as a result our relation to our physical surroundings have also changed .

Curated from more than 7000 street-photographs found in the HCSP-pool, through this series of 18 pictures I aim to highlight an aspect of the city, which street photography does not frequently portray.

These pictures introduce a place that while physically belonging to the city lacks what we would normally associate with “urban”.
The constitution of our cities today makes the appearance of these undefined spaces inevitable, they have no identity of their own and become insignificant spaces to us, the people who see them and inhabit them.

These quiet places are a contrast to the hot spots where street photography usually frequents with its plethora of diversity, profound mix of people, where juxtapositions are aplenty… and these 18 pictures, to me, show places that describe our world in different way to most street photographs, they describe a world without identity, where the city lacks urbanity or a blueprint of our cities and the idea of a city itself.

“The Third City “is a name I have loaned from G. Clement Manifesto of “The Third Landscape” – a small book that confronts landscapes in the same terms.

There has been a lot of work done on this area, from urbanists, architects, photographers, sociologists economists.

The way we experience a territory, or a city is determinant on the significance it has for us. How do we relate to the places we pass by everyday? In our consciousness a city, a region or our way to work is constructed by images and impressions where places we don’t emotionally relate to are edited away.
We don’t imagine a place by a continuous set of images. Maybe the suburbs, the in-between places are not so homegenic and generic.

I believe each city has its own third-city, as it has its own cathedral. But I believe the cities own third-city will tell more about who are living there than the cathedral, Gehry or Koolhaas-building built to brand the city.

Recommended reading:

Joel Garreau ‘Edge City: Life on the New Frontier’ (1991), M. Augé ‘Los no lugares. Espacios de anonimato. Una antropología de la sobre modernidad’ (1992), S. Scama ‘Landscape And Memory’ (1995), R. Smithson. ‘Robert Smithson, The Collected Writings’(1996), E. Soja ‘Postmetropolis’ (2000), T. Sieverts ‘Cities without Cities’ (2000), J. Ryckwert ‘The seductuion of place’ (2003), Lars Tunbjork ‘Madrid’ (2004), W. Saunders ‘Sprawl and Suburbia’ (2005), R. Ingersoll ‘Sprawltown’ (2006), R. Koolhaas ´Generic City’, G. Clement ‘El manifiesto del tercer paisaje’ (2007)

Pictures from the HCSP Pool on Flickr.

Photographers: 1.Ben Roberts, 2.Hin Chua, 3.Rafal Pruszynski, 4.Oscar Juárez, 5.Ian Grivois, 6.Lisa Scheer, .7Jose Joao, 8.Hin Chua, 9.James Hendrick, 10.Alessandro Marchi, 11. Hin Chua, 12.Naveen Jamal, 13.Luis Torres, 14.Jeff Hammond, 15.Maree Tonkin, 16.Maciej Dakowicz, 17.John Goldsmith