The Urban Spectator: American Concept-Cities from Kodak to Google (Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture)
“In his new book, Eric Gordon adds an important new perspective to our understanding  of the relationship between visual illustrations and urban landscapes. In The Urban Spectator: American Concept-Cities from Kodak to Google, Gordon argues American  cities have produced a new way of seeing, and catalogs the subtle ways visual  illustrations mold our perceptions of the urban landscape, our expectations of  the city, and ultimately the urban form itself. Gordon’s book successfully provides  a historical and conceptual framework . . . to visualize the city and engage its  residents to shaping its future."—Planning and Technology Today“Gordon contributes to an understanding of how over the last century people have  distanced themselves from the actual city and their fellow citizens. As his book points out, one sees this in ever-changing ways through the mediation of screens . . .The author handles this form of seeing, called possessive spectatorship, with authority. Recommended.”—Choice“The premise of Gordon’s The Urban Spectator is that people have ‘a cultural impulse to possess, control, and assemble the experience of the city.’ The handheld camera of the late nineteenth century provided a powerful technology for satisfying this urge. Subsequent visual technologies (e.g., film and television) reinforced and extended a possessive spectatorship. Gordon further claims that once we began to represent the city cinematically or as a series of snapshots, the city itself is transformed. Technology mediates the city and, then, the city is brought into correspondence with its representations. [Gordon makes] it clear that electronic technology does not simply mediate, it also senses our presence; creates reactive, nonhuman worlds; and changes how cities are perceived, represented, and reimagined.”—Winterthur Portfolio