The V&A Dundee have opened up a new photography exhibition which features a stunning diorama of Dundee with sits at the centrepiece of the exhibition.
Marking 10 years of Dundee’s designation as the only UNESCO City of Design, Photo City: How Images Shape the Urban World shows that photography does more than document and reflect city life.
As a design tool photography also shapes our understanding of cities and helps us project future ways of living together.
In the exhibition visitors can see iconic city photography by some of the most acclaimed photographers in history including Henri Cartier Bresson, Berenice Abbott and Paul Strand, and discover how these works have influenced the way cities are designed and experienced.
Visitors will also encounter exciting work by contemporary architects, photographers and artists who question the ways images shape, reflect and mediate our daily lives.
The exhibition also expands on the idea of what photography is by including contemporary imaging technologies such as GPS, drones, gaming technology and lidar scanning.
A highlight is a new large-scale portrait of Dundee commissioned for the exhibition, the latest city in Japanese photographer Sohei Nishino’s ambitious ‘Diorama Map’ series, which also includes Tokyo, New York, Paris, London and Rio de Janeiro.
Nishino lived in Dundee for a month, during which time he walked the streets, met residents and took thousands of photographs of social spaces, cultural events, sporting events and sites of cultural significance.
On his return to Japan, he created a collage of his experience, assembling by hand thousands of photographs to create the 5 metre wide semi-realistic, semi-imagined ‘Diorama Map, Dundee’.
Speaking of his new work, Nishino said:
“Dundee is the smallest city I have worked in, but the final result was bigger than many of the other cities because I focused more on the people and events. If you look at a city from a bird’s eye view, it will just flow by you. By walking and exploring together with local people, I believe I was able to create a work that captures the landscape from multiple points of view.”
More than 150 photographs, films and installations are on display as part of the free exhibition which runs from today up until 29 October 2024 at V&A Dundee.
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