Surfaces taught me most of the things I know about cities.
The surfaces of cities are one of the most undervalued spatial typologies in our understanding of urban experience. Architects design building facades and specify construction materials; municipalities authorise and regulate public signage and displays; graffiti writers use walls to inscribe their presence in space; and commercial enterprises promote services and products on billboards, shop fronts and notice boards - yet we rarely pay sufficient attention to the incessant activity on the walls of our cities. This realisation was the starting point for my upcoming book, Urban surfaces, graffiti, and the right to the city; and is the driver behind developing this website.
City Surfaces is an urban research and photography project focused on city walls and surfaces as archives of urban cultures. It is based on my book, Urban surfaces, graffiti, and the right to the city, and develops some of those ideas.
This website showcases the multiple ways in which cities reveal themselves through their public surfaces – and how urban spaces are managed, claimed and contested at surface level.
Walking through cities and taking photos of walls and buildings is probably my main mode of engaging with the world and making sense of it, so I started this project as a home for my urban surface photography and observations.
To begin with, I will show you how I see (seeing is a way of thinking, photography is a way of knowing). I am publishing as close as I can to one wall a day - which should keep me going for years, especially at the rate that I keep photographing the cities I encounter. I recently moved from London to Melbourne so you might notice a bias towards these two cities.
As the project grows, I am planning to develop a section of scholarly references for surface studies, publish and expand an existing sketch for interviewing a wall, and feature work by other photographers, scholars, artists and practitioners working with surfaces (get in touch if that’s you and we haven’t spoken yet).
Eventually, this platform will become a base for multiple voices to build a comprehensive discourse on walls and surface cultures around the world.
If you want to understand the culture of a city, learn to observe its surfaces.
Surfaces live. Get on board.
- Sabina
About me
Dr Sabina Andron is a cities scholar specialising in creative and transgressive public cultures, with a specific interest in the semiotics of urban walls and surfaces. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Cities and Urbanism at the Melbourne Centre for Cities.
Full bio and research profile on my personal website.