Catherine Wagner and the Photography of Urban Change

An extensive analysis of the city-scape (and architectural)
photographs by American women photographer Catherine Wagner,
which were exhibited at the Libbie Rice Farish Gallery, Houston,
at the end of 1988. Wagner photographed the process of building
the George Moscone Convention Center (San Francisco) and the
Louisiana World Exposition. Her high viewpoint is interpreted as
that of ""an all-seeing Cyclops''. The author traces Wagner's
photographs as ""belonging to a tradition of visual and literary
reactions to urbanization that assumed its modern form in the
19th century''. ""How Wagner inflects that tradition with her
own Reagan-era vision of the modern city forms the substance of
this essay''. The author analyses socio-economic and
political-cultural developments in California during the last
decades, and suggests that ""Comparisons with the long tradition
of such (urban) images highlight the uniqueness of Wagner's
interests and the ambivalence toward modern technology that she
shares with earlier generations''. French photographers who
specialized in 'construction series' from the late 1850's till
1890 are discussed. Comparisons are made with literary
equivalents that criticize the (re-)construction of the inner
cities, citing Baudelaire, Zola and Sartre.
Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston


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