Confined to the edges. Reflections on visual research in Bologna

Abstract

The Urban Archives (UA) project was conceived to create publicly available digital records of “ephemeral street texts, allowing them to continue speaking as documents long after they have been removed from the physical landscape” (Gendelman, Dobrowolsky and Aiello, 2010, p. 190). We collaborated with undergraduate students and the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections to build a searchable database of images of the city. The outcome is an archive of over 2,000 fully catalogued and tagged images of political graffiti, ghost signs, commercial signage and storefronts, architectural landmarks, protest marches, murals, and so on (Urban Archives Database, n.d.).

Keywords

• Observing today’s Italy. New urban ethnography in Italy / Osservare l’Italia di oggi. La nuova etnografia urbana italiana
• lo Squaderno No. 24