Spectacular City: Photographing the Future

by Steven Jacobs, Jean-François Chevrier, Emiliano Gandolfi

Spectacular City presents the work of some 30 leading photographers of the urban landscape, an international group with a particularly strong Dutch representation. Its artists find an almost extraterrestrial beauty in liminal urban spaces, sites in transition. And in recent years their work has offered a whole new way of seeing, among other subjects, ports and industrial like some other Cinderellas featured here, these neighborhoods were once considered ugly but have now acquired such a fresh visual appeal that they have come to serve as inspiration for new public spaces and buildings. The diversity of the assembled work reveals the complexity and versatility of both the urban environment and the photographers, who include Olivo Barbieri, Oliver Boberg, Balthasar Burkhard, Vincenzo Castella, Edgar Cleijne, Stephane Couturier, Thomas Demand, Andreas Gefeller, Geert Goiris, Andreas Gursky, Naoya Hatakeyama, Todd Hido, Dan Holdsworth, Francesco Jodice, Aglaia Konrad, Luisa Lambri, Ine Lamers, Ze Tsung Leong, Armin Linke, Taiji Matsue, Karin Apollonia Muller, Bas Princen, Thomas Ruff, Frank van der Salm, Heidi Specker, Jules Spinatsch, Thomas Struth, Michael Wesely and Edwin Zwakman.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2007

About the author

Steven Jacobs is an art historian specializing in the relationship between film and the visual arts. His research also focuses on the representation of architecture, the city and landscape in film and photography, as well as on themes in Belgian modern art history, including the work of Raoul De Keyser.
He has published internationally in journals such as Art Journal, October, History of Photography, The Journal of Architecture, Millennium Film Journal and De Witte Raaf. His books include Raoul De Keyser: Retour 1964–2006 (2007), The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock (2007), Framing Pictures: Film and the Visual Arts (2011), Screening Statues: Sculpture and Cinema (2017) and Art in the Cinema: The Mid-Century Art Documentary (2020).
Alongside his academic work, Jacobs has curated exhibitions for institutions including SMAK Ghent and Museum Arnhem, and has programmed films for KASK-Cinema, Cinema Zuid and Cinematek Brussels. He teaches modern art at Ghent University and film history at the University of Antwerp.