ABSTRACT
Harper’s project of a piazza in Italy was to soci olo gic ally inter rog ate the mundane move ments of its inhab it ants, so as to better under stand what role the piazza played in the life of the town. In other words, it was not just about creat ing portraits of people and society, it was also about creat ing portraits of space and devel op ing informed, ethno graphic narratives from these portraits. Much of the social science research on space using visual methods comes from works of soci olo gists, geograph ers and anthro po lo gists. In addi tion to his images of the piazza, Harper also photo graphed scenes of Hong Kong using a special ist panor amic camera, captur ing a wide array of spatial arrange ments and inter ac tion (Knowles and Harper 2009). Likewise, Simpson (2012) makes use of wide-angles as well as time-lapse tech niques in his photo graphy to docu ment the place-making actions of street perform ances in Bath in the United Kingdom. On the other hand, Hoffman’s (2012) work on miners in Mayengema combines and juxta poses images of space with studies of the body in an effort to under stand the inter sec tions of labour, the envir onment and the indi vidual.
