Abstract

Do visual relationships between a city and its residents exist? And what do they mean? Based on a participative photography experience held in Ferrara by three different kind of people: born and bred inhabitants, academic students, and immigrants, this paper intends to investigate how people appropriate the urban context they live in. Methodologically, the camera is a means which gives an alternative way of analyzing social interactions in an urban context. Seen through subjective and intimate points of view, the urban representations of the city are multiple and, even if they are far from the most conventional images of the city, such as postcards, they play with "common places". In general, the different groups show through their own photographs different relationships of and senses of belonging to the city.