Part of the [[Over-long piece of writing]], previous entry was [[A Brief Diversion on Image Generation and Social Media]]. The city, like a [[Sunset]], is ubiquitous. I will give a brief definition of a city that may be helpful for you. I have adapted and tried my best to give my own take on a definition by Calvin Seerveld, who is far smarter than me. A city is a permanent place where people live and conduct civic affairs, perform cultural rituals, honor and remember the past, collect taxes, keep records, bury their dead and welcome new life. Cities are common like sunsets, but cities are human and thus have all the messiness of humanity. ![[2311.jpg]] *[[Stop Number 2311]]* There is a way to take a picture of a city or a single building in the same way as a sunset which attempts to reduce it to a commodified image. Such a city image may (in fact, probably does) include a sunset. There may be a neon sign or an interesting reflection in the rain or both. Maybe there's a beautiful woman crossing a beautiful street just so. In any case, the image attempts to capture some superficial visual element of a city. (Written 2024, continued below, written in 2025) What do people want when they view a picture of a city? I think the impulse is essentially connected to tourism. Of course, we have more prosaic forms of imagery such as commercial (like viewing a piece of property you wish to purchase) or functional (like using [[The Quantitative and Qualitative Difference Between These Images and Google Street View|Google Street View]] to review the exterior of a building) in view here is the more artistically-inclined purposed of images. In all likelihood, it's a picture viewed online. Pictures viewed offline in this genre are most typically a form of benign wall-art that is found in a hotel, doctor's office, or in a model home in a planned housing community. In exceedingly rare cases, you may find yourself at a fine art show of photographs of a city itself. If this is the case, you may find yourself in a different time period during which such photographs were exhibited for their own sake. It may happen in this third decade of the twenty first century, but it's unlikely. So, we turn to aesthetic imagery focusing on the city, most likely digital. This is usually distributed and viewed on a social media platform such as Instagram or Reddit. Why do we view this? I think the basic sensation one seeks when viewing some image is a voyeuristic pleasure derived from considering the positive characteristics of a city- community, possibility, accessibility, action. If one likes the idea of a city, they're likely to enjoy looking at a picture of a city. ![[11.jpg]] *[[Stop Number 11]]* Do these images fit into any sort of neat aesthetic mold which could be explained along these lines? Not exactly. What I believe I've tried to do here is create images which fit some loose aesthetic vision but are also comprehensive enough to cover a city in a street-view-like experience that is nonetheless aesthetically whole. I think most people have gone on street view and enjoyed the process of getting a bit lost view this thing and that, and that's what I've tried to offer here, yet within some aesthetic framework. In the past when I've tried to make images of a city, I think I've been a bit discouraged and struggled to fit the images within a mold of tourist, postcard, consumer-oriented images. I handle the idea of "sidewalk crack images" to some extent later in [[An infinitely loose and slackening frame of reference]]. I often sought the feedback loop of approval social media offers, which is what made new images of the city difficult within that framework. Richmond, in many ways, is not exactly a picturesque city. The question then became, what's a more plausible feedback loop that can encourage the desire to make without turning it into a box-checking exercise? This project is the answer to that question. Then again, I'm not ranging around for *justification* to this project. The writing became a means of encouraging the project along- making images alone was often a sufficient goad to continue in the project. It became necessary to fit it into a larger system. I will unpack this more in the [[Trichotomy Model]]. In the time being, though, you can continue in the [[Over-long piece of writing]] with the next entry: [[Justifying, Not Justifying (River Metaphor)]]. (Finished this writing on September 2, 2025) ![[19.jpg]] *[[Stop Number 19]]*