ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the first of two visual genres that the notion of the skyline refers to: the skyline as a distant view from a low and publicly accessible viewpoint. Explaining the importance that views from Waterloo Bridge towards the City play in current planning processes, it shows that each of these views is conceptualised as a compositional whole characterised by the logic of internal coherence. Claiming that a political appropriation of the new London skyline requires a fundamental critique of this conceptualisation, alternative approaches were developed as early as the first half of the twentieth century, for example, by advocates of the English Townscape movement who proposed an understanding of cityscapes as democratic art and an understanding of urban views as surrealist pictures. Discussing these conceptualisations in relation to Benjamin’s political constellations, the chapter explores an understanding of image as that which emerges between decontextualised elements as opposed to a whole composition.
