Circling

Photographer Lilo Bauer was invited within the framework of the research project Citygraphy: Between Urban Politics and Urban Aesthetics to develop a topographic interpretation of 21st century Maastricht. Citygraphy - a joint project of the Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht, the Hogeschool Sint Lukas Brussel and Efemera - examines city development and representations of the modern urban condition since the 19th century.
Bauer’s photography focuses on three locations in Maastricht: a suburb surrounding a prison, a park containing the ruins of fortified city walls, and a defunct factory as it is being emptied out. All three sites display certain elements of enclosure, visibility and control.

“The eye only appears to be roving aimlessly: in fact it aims to take in the whole. The extraordinary transformation of the word ‘panorama’ from a special technical term to a broadly applied concept shows that the panoramic experience was not limited to landscape alone. ‘Panoramic’ vision is primarily a way of ‘getting a grip’ on things, a grip that leaves what is observed undamaged, but surrounds and seizes the whole.”
[Stephan Oettermann. “The Origins of the Panorama” in The Panorama, History of a Mass Medium. Translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider, Zone Books, New York, 1997, p. 22]