Visual Ecologies of Placemaking

Leslie Atzmon, Pamela Stewart

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350224865
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: History of Architecture

Contributing to a growing discourse in spatial humanities, this collection of essays provides a unique, critical insight into how place is shaped through visual and sensory practices. By looking at a range of natural, built, and digital environments, across historical and contemporary contexts, Visual Ecologies of Placemaking offers an in-depth study into place as a spatial, social and cultural construct.

Essays explore public and private spaces, cities, gardens, sacred settings and domestic scenes, and particularly consider human beings' relationships to place at times when places are undergoing radical shifts due to occurrences such as global pandemics, changing climates and widespread social unrest. This timely volume features a range of case studies that explore places from storage units to city streets, performances from sacred pilgrimages to drag shows, and identities from secessionists to imperial authorities. Essays also contribute to emerging areas of inquiry, such as queer and decolonial studies and the digital humanities.

Visual Ecologies of Placemaking offers a broad examination of the performative aspects of place and identity, and yields new ways of thinking about how places are shaped and negotiated. Leslie Atzmon and Pamela Stewart's collection provides fresh and essential insights into the varied roles that place plays in our understanding and expression of the world and our place within it.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• FIGURES
• CONTRIBUTORS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• Part I RITUAL AND PERFORMANCE
• Chapter 1.1 BUILDING THE NEW NAZARETH: SACRED HISTORY AND SACRED SPACE AT AN ENGLISH SHRINE
• Chapter 1.2 SACRED AND PROFANE: HISTORY, POWER, AND CONSUMPTION IN AZTEC PLACEMAKING
• Chapter 1.3 NINETEENTH-CENTURY PANORAMAS AS VIRTUAL PLACEMAKING
• Chapter 1.4 CREATIVE PLACEMAKING AT LAMSON’S DEPARTMENT STORE IN TOLEDO: SITE-SPECIFIC IMMERSIVE INSTALLATION AND THE RECOVERY OF LOCATION, LOCALE, AND SENSE OF PLACE1
• Part II EXCLUSION AND APPROPRIATION
• Chapter 2.1 CREATING PLACE IN THE CHUMASH MISSIONS OF SPANISH CALIFORNIA
• Chapter 2.2 MAPPING THE NEIGHBORHOOD, MAKING PLACE: AN ALTERNATIVE MAP IN LATE MEIJI TOKYO
• Chapter 2.3 EDGE SPACE: CREATIVE ENGAGEMENTS IN A GUERILLA SCULPTURE GARDEN
• Chapter 2.4 MORPHING SPACES AND BLACK PLACES: PLACE TO SPACE IN THE FILMIC NORTH-SOUTH
• Chapter 2.5 BETWEEN STONE AND POEM: THE GENDERED POLITICS OF VISUAL ECOLOGY IN EARLY MODERN CHINA
• Part III RECOVERY AND LOSS
• Chapter 3.1 DRAWING THE RING OF STEEL
• Chapter 3.2 NARCOAESTHETICS: CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN ART AND THE CRISIS OF PLACE
• Chapter 3.3 THE KOM-ON-INN AS A THIRD PLACE: PAINTINGS, CONVERSATIONS, AND COMMUNITY-CREATION IN DULUTH, MINNESOTA
• Chapter 3.4 DIGITAL ARCTIC: THROUGH MACHINE EYES
• Chapter 3.5 SEEN AND UNSEEN: MEDIATED CULTURAL LANDSCAPES OF THE EVERYDAY ON ZOOM
• INDEX