Researching and Photographing Cities: Getting started

This chapter raises preliminary issues and questions intended for those undertaking urban investigation through the camera lens. It issues an invitation to think critically about what a photograph is and how photography might be deployed in critical urban research and commentary. Entire cities are un-researchable. Yet ‘slicing’ them for investigation raises issues of partiality, limitation and applicability to the bigger issues of our time. Staring into a crack in the ground might entertain you but how useful is it really in understanding how the social world actually works?