The City as Contact Zone

• Published in: Visual resources Vol. 30; no. 4; pp. 354 - 372
• Main Author: Lockemann, Bettina
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 01.12.2014
• Subjects: Architecture; Contact Zone; Contemporary Photography; Globalization; Japan and the West; Japanese Urbanity; Photographic Depiction of Urbanity
• ISSN: 0197-3762; 1477-2809
• DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2014.964711

This paper introduces the research-based photographic project Contact Zone that is conceived through the study of the Japanese period of self-inflicted Westernization beginning shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century. Considering especially the emergence of Western style architecture in the new capital of Tokyo, the paper presents working methods of German architects, who were invited to Japan to build new governmental buildings in the 1880s. The description of the historical situation serves as a basis for the presentation of Contact Zone photographed by the author in 2006. Contact Zone is a documentary art project dealing with the appearance of Japanese cityscapes in the beginning twenty-first century. It focuses on the integration of Western style architecture from the nineteenth century and different architectural styles and periods in Japanese cities. The work shows that Japanese contemporary urbanity is not completely contrasting the appearance of European cities today, but that it has absorbed Western influences into its own fabric. The idea is to show an image of the global Japanese city today that features historical and cultural influences from the West. Whereas many photographic works by Western photographers usually present Japan and Japanese cities as completely deviant from Western cities, thus concentrating on Japanese Otherness, the photographic project Contact Zone focuses instead on similarities in the visual fabric of contemporary Japanese cities.