Creating Counter-Landscapes: Art-Based Research in Two Logistics Parks in Frankfurt Am Main and Kassel (Germany)

This article explores a way of combining visual arts and urban studies, based on the use of photography as ‘representation’ and ‘evocation’ of the urban. The demonstration draws on a landscape photographic documentation of two logistics parks located on the outskirts of the cities of Frankfurt am Main and Kassel in Germany, conducted in 2016–2017. The article first presents the theoretical framework from which the spatial knowledge embedded in both photographing and walking practices is envisaged, and then describes how the documentation methods combine both practices. It then analyses two series of photographs and shows how they create ‘counter-landscapes’, i.e. images that lead to a theoretical and cultural reappraisal of the landscapes of logistics parks, usually seen as ‘non-places’. Read more