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Geographical field note puerto peñasco: Fishing village to tourist mecca
... What stands out in Klett's work and many other projects originating from the natural sciences, is the exacting techniques in replicating the same framing, location, angles, light and shadow of the images. However, in the social sciences, both Rieger (1996) and Metcalfe (2016) argue that this precision is not necessary; Finn et al. (2009) also note the difficulty of doing this, as modern digital camera lenses have changed the geometry of a photograph. ...
... Their work on the Mexican border town of Agua Prieta, demonstrates the economic changes in the community, associated with the growth in cross-border tourism. Using a similar data source, Finn et al. (2009) conclude that repeat photography that uses historic postcards is 'more than a then-andnow exercise' that 'enables inspection of a place in motion, shifting its economic focus . . . while clinging to its historical root' (596). ...
... While photos taken half a century apart or longer miss the many stages of transition (cf. Rieger 1996), they help to present a clear image of change that focuses on the big picture, rather than the various stages in between (Arreola and Burkhart 2010;Finn et al. 2009). ...
Repeat photography—the practice of rephotographing the same locations at different moments in time—is an under-utilised method for interpreting urban change. Despite this, it has the potential to give new empirical and theoretical meanings to our understanding of the ways in which major forces of change shape cities and their urban landscapes. The purpose of this article is to give a visual dimension to understanding long-term change in Toronto, Canada, since the 1960s. It will use historic images taken by streetcar enthusiasts as a starting point. Rather than studying these trolleys themselves, it is everything around them that is of interest for this study. As streetcar systems were disappearing or contracting after World War II, dedicated and passionate enthusiasts visited Toronto, which retained the largest streetcar network in North America, to ride and photograph them. Their images give us unique insights into the ordinary city in ways that few other genres do. To analyse long-term patterns of change, these historic images have been rephotographed over the past few years and show how trends such as deindustrialisation, financialisation, and gentrification are made visible in the urban landscape. In this article, I also echo assertions by Elvin Wyly and others that photographs are a useful part of critical constructive analysis of the city.
... Scholars have used repeat photography to analyze land cover change (Bahre, 1991;Bahre & Bradbury, 1978;Hastings & Turner, 1965;Martin & Turner, 1977) and, more recently, to measure cultural and economic transformation of landscape (Arreola & Burkhart, 2010;Finn et al., 2009). Repeat photography is the comparison of old and new photographs taken from the same location. ...
... Similar claims appear in recent studies of cultural landscape change. A small Mexican fishing village in the 1950s that consisted of a hotel, a brick church, a few restaurants, and some modest dwellings was rephotographed as a tourist center with several hotels, paved roads, and sidewalks (Finn et al., 2009). The authors describe how repeat photography can be employed to "understand the ongoing transformation of a humanized landscape" (Finn et al., 2009, p. 593). ...
... The authors describe how repeat photography can be employed to "understand the ongoing transformation of a humanized landscape" (Finn et al., 2009, p. 593). For Finn et al. (2009), repeat photography may also be used to visualize cultural and economic changes: "visualization" is a process that comes about because repeat photography is more than a then-and-now exercise. Repeat photography allows for closer "inspection of a place in motion . . . it takes the viewer beyond a single depiction of a historical landscape and creates a narrative of place through time" (Finn et al., 2009, p. 585). ...
Traditionally, repeat photography has been used to analyze land cover change. This paper describes how repeat photography may be used as a tool to enhance the short-term study abroad experience by facilitating cultural interaction and understanding. We present evidence from two cases and suggest a five-step repeat photography method for educators to use to increase participation and cultural interaction of students involved in fieldwork, long-haul fieldwork, and study abroad programs. We suggest that through the five steps developed in this paper that students' potential to understand and interact within the host culture is increased.
... Distintos estudios sobre la región señalan que Peñasco se encuentra en transición de puerto pesquero tradicional a ciudad turística. Este proceso lleva un ritmo acelerado, ya que en muy poco tiempo se produjeron profundas transformaciones urbanas, sociales y económicas (Méndez y Enríquez, 2012;Enríquez, 2008;Estrada, 2009;Finn et al., 2009;Martínez, 2008). Este proceso arranca en la década de los noventa, cuando se edifican las primeras cadenas hoteleras en terrenos ejidales (a partir de las reformas al artículo 27 constitucional) y se deteriora la pesca como principal actividad económica. ...
This book analyses the relation between traditional music and tourism in Mexico. It has different chapters dedicated to describe different social process around traditional music in touristic contexts.
... Since then, the technique has spread to other physical disciplines such as ecology (Clements 1905), geology (Bryan & La Rue 1927), and geomorphology (Lobeck 1939). Not limited to the physical sciences either, rephotography has also been used to assess social concerns such as land-use change (Kull 2005) and the socio-economic influences of tourism (Finn et al. 2009). The method has also been adapted for use in anthropology as a means to assess place meaning and awareness (Smith 2007). ...
Detailed scientific analyses of rock decay and site stability can aid rock art conservation but cultural sensitivity often limits the use of traditional methods, which often require rock samples or other invasive procedures. The need for intuitive non-invasive rock art analysis led to the creation of the Rock Art Stability Index (RASI). While RASI is a validated rock art assessment tool, a primarily quantitative approach can sometimes overlook the aesthetic component of rock art - a characteristic critical to the presentation and perceived value of the resource. Therefore, this research examined the applicability of repeat photography, or rephotography, in addition to RASI providing a more comprehensive approach. This mixed method approach was employed at three different rock art sites in the Arkansan Ozarks of varying lithologies, geographic characteristics, rock art type, and management policies. Results suggest that RASI allows for more consistent and reliable assessments, as rephotography has more restrictions and limitations. Nevertheless, when available, rephotography proved to be an immensely useful addition to quantitative research techniques, such as RASI, to provide heritage management with a more holistic evaluation addressing both geologic stability and changes in visual quality over time. © 2016 Gebrüder Borntraeger Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart, Germany.
... Regardless of sample size and areal coverage, a main focus and strength of rephotography rests in its ability to study a feature, phenomena, and/or landform for change through time (Butler 1994, Butler & DeChano 2001, Finn et al. 2009). In geomorphology specifically, the subdiscipline of fluvial geomorphology appears to use rephotography heavily (e.g., Frankl et al. 2012, Peckarsky 2014. ...
In this introduction to the special issue on Photogeomorphology and Landscape Change, the guest editor and section editor team up to provide a background to the use of photography and imagery within geomorphology. The authors examine a range of approaches and applications within the geomorphology subfield (of photogeomorphology), where historical imagery (either in print as photographs or as digital images), such as postcards, books, archival collections, and so forth, are adopted for portrayal, comparison, and measurement of landscape alterations across both time and space. The uses have been myriad, as they are applied from a variety of approaches and represent a visual tool for assessment and quantification. Following a brief commentary on various approaches and applications, this introduction outlines papers contained as part of the special issue that represent a variety of current approaches and applications adopted within a photogeomorphological methodology to study landscape change. © 2016 Gebrüder Borntraeger Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart, Germany.
Engaging with a scene of the iconic movie Smoke (by Wayne Wang, 1995) in which a rephotographic project is sensitively elicited, this paper addresses the technique of repeat photography to contribute to methodological debates that have arisen within the nascent ‘Mobility and Humanities’ subfield. Through a humanistic perspective, the paper reviews and expands the nexus between mobility, photography and the urban by comparing the technique with three methodological issues: the blurring of supposed binaries, such as traditional/innovative, static/moving and fast/slow; the possibility of grasping the mobilities of the world in a post-human vein; and the opportunity to also consider techniques as sites for reflection. To address these issues, the paper draws from philosophies of movement, post-phenomenological and object-oriented stances and visual and urban cultural geographies. With reference to the urban realm, this paper proposes three perspectives on rephotography, namely (1) rephotography as a practice of slow and rhythmic attunement with circumstantial spacetimes moving backwards and forwards; (2) rephotography as a visual ontography that displaces the human and opens up space for the apprehension of the agency and mobility of things; and (3) rephotography as a continual process of activation of moving gazes on cities and their imaginaries.
The current elaboration of a post-phenomenological geography is mostly a theoretical effort. This paper aims to contribute to this theoretical stance from a practical point of view by proposing a comparison between the technique of repeat photography and the trajectories along which the approach of post-phenomenological geography has been outlined recently. From the engagement with a number of post-phenomenological interventions and an empirical case study – namely, a repeat-photography project conducted by the Italian amateur photographer Claudio Rigon at First World War cemetery sites on the Asiago Plateau in the Italian Pre-Alpine region – the paper derives a conceptual development of this outline. Drawing from the theorisation of photographic indexicality and the role of subjects and objects in the photographic act, it is argued that repeat photography, more than other photographic genres, simultaneously entails the agency and displacement of the human. In fact, the compulsory nature and strict rules of repeat photography (same subject, same vantage point, same frame, same atmosphere) liberate the photographer from the self-referential nature of creative photography and make room for other, non-human agents to co-determine the process and the final product. Repeat photography is envisioned here as a form of “being-with” through the image, a way to be attuned to subjects, objects and spacetimes, which is not, or not solely, human-centred, but can still convey an ethical aspect. The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). © 2018 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).
These two bibliographies are described in our article, ―Fieldwork and the Geographical Review: Retrospect and Possible Prospects‖ (Delyser and Karolczyk 2010) which reviews fieldwork accounts as detailed in the articles (over 600 of them) published in the Geographical Review's first 99 volumes. The ―primary bibliography‖ includes all the articles we found that provide readers with rich details of field methods, experiences, funding sources, and regional field focus. The ―secondary bibliography‖ is shorter because it includes only those articles that present much more peripheral accounts of fieldwork—typically very brief mention in an article's body, or one confined to notes. This introduction outlines the kinds of articles the bibliography contains, expands on the published article, and supports the articles claims (for reasons of length these were omitted from the published article). Of all the articles, only the fifty–six in the 2001 ―Doing Fieldwork‖ double issue and twenty others could be called methods or methodological papers—articles that focused heavily, or centrally on issues of fieldwork. These articles focused on a broad spectrum of issues including methods in exploration (Stefansson 1919; Allen 1972), mapping and cartography (Sauer 1919; Moffit 1920; Matthes 1926; Kuchler 1953; Boyce 2004), oceanography (Johnson 1932), snow surveying (Church 1933), post–war political geography (Jones 1943), climatology (Sanderson 1950), photography (Bird and Morrison 1964; Denevan 1993; Finn et al. 2009), cultural ecology (Harris 1971, Denevan 1971), field analysis (Buvinger 1978), demography (Morgan and Rudzitis 1978), behavioral geography (Hobbs 1996), and zoogeomorphology (Baer and Butler 2000). The special fieldwork issue presented articles on participatory fieldwork (Routledge 2001); children's geographies (Aitken 2001); covert fieldwork (Parr 2001); protecting privacy (Myers 2001); political ethnography (Sangarasivam 2001); validity (Herbert 2001); theory and fieldwork (Duncan and Duncan 2001); language fluency (Veeck 2001); and archival fieldwork (Harris 2001). Based on natural breaks that reflect prominent, qualitative methodological, and epistemological shifts in the kinds of fieldwork described, we identified three periods of fieldwork: 1916–1959, 1960–1999, and 2000–2009 (the present). We have included articles that represent the kinds of fieldwork we deemed typical of each period.
Picture postcards are visual data that have great utility in urban research. This Research Note examines the use and application of photographic postcards to urban landscape analysis through a case study in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico on the U.S. border directly across from Douglas, Arizona. Postcards are especially valuable for visualizing landscape change in cities. Arranged and analyzed systematically, picture postcards permit the researcher to visualize a serial view of people and place, thereby enhancing our understanding of landscape change. Serial visual imagery presents a quality to seeing urban landscape that is difficult to achieve with more conventional historic photographs or from land use data like maps and archival records alone.
Research on attachment to high amenity places has usually focused on visitors, despite the fact that many of these settings also may hold permanent residents. Visitor employed photography (VEP) has been used to understand landscape elements that increase the quality of the recreational experience. Our research applies the techniques of VEP to analyze local elements that foster place attachment among permanent residents of high amenity areas. We provided single use cameras to 45 subjects in two communities located in and adjacent to Jasper National Park, Alberta, instructing them to take photos of elements that most attach them to their community. Our results reveal a complex relationship between ecological and sociocultural factors in attachment; these elements are not separate, but help define each other.
This paper describes a largely unrecognized source of panoramic photo- graphs from the 1930s for fire lookouts in the American West, and uses a set of those photographs from Glacier National Park (GNP), Montana, to illustrate landscape changes through rephotography. We rephotographed 360° panoramas from nine of the same fire lookouts and qualitatively and quantitatively compared the nature and amount of land- scape change from 1935 to the late 1990s. Notable changes included drastic glacial reces- sion, infilling of snow-avalanche paths, forest succession as a result of fire-suppression policies, upward advance of treeline, and pressures on the Park periphery resulting from anthropogenic developments. Geomorphic changes in general were less distinct than bio- geographic changes. (Key words: Repeat photography, environmental change, Glacier National Park (GNP), Rocky Mountains, Montana.)
Wyckoff reveals Montana's changing physical and cultural landscape by pairing photographs taken by state highway engineers in the 1920s and 1930s with photographs taken at the same sites today. The photo pairs and accompanying interpretive essays tell a vivid story of continuity and change. Copyright
Sightseeing and the use of the visual media are popular among geographers and, indeed, in modern society. Every method or technique has, however, its biases and limitations. What are those that depend on the eye and the camera? Historically, sight is praised for giving human beings a vividly articulated world, but also condemned as idle curiosity and a source of illusion. True sight or vision is one that sees behind appearance. The visual media are criticized for their inability to present the reality behind appearance and for their amoral aestheticism. Geographers need more than a superficial awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of a popular tool-photographic images.
The Victorian era was a period of tremendous growth and change. The cities of the era, as precursors of today's, have attracted much attention because they seem capable of .deepening understanding of the dynamics of urban social and morphological change.1 Study of these cities also lends insight into Victorian society's perceptions and responses to rapid change, attitudes which were held in tension between excitement about progress and alarm over change at the expense of long-lived traditions.
This study quantifies historical changes in flood power (measured by boundary shear stress and unit stream power) and riparian vegetation in a narrow stream canyon. Analyses of historical air and ground photographs since 1922 in lower Harris Wash indicate the occurrence of active channel widening, floodplain narrowing, and an 86 percent increase in riparian vegetation growth on the canyon bottom. To quantify temporal changes in flood power at a cross-section, the WinXSPRO channel cross-section analyzer calculated stage and flood power at various return interval flood discharges for 1922 (using a ground photo) and 1998 (using field measurements). Inputs to the program included estimates of Manning's roughness coefficients and channel and floodplain width measurements for both years. Between 1922 and 1998, active-channel flood power values increased 11 to 53 percent, and floodplain flood power values decreased 44 to 97 percent. Of the floodplain power decrease, 20 to 45 percent (at a minimum) is directly attributable to increased hydraulic roughness caused by woody riparian vegetation establishment. This research suggests (1) that historical ground photos may be useful for quantifying temporal changes in flood power in relationship to vegetation, and (2) that riparian vegetation change has dramatically reduced floodplain flood power values in semiarid stream canyons during this century.[Key words: fluvial geomorphology, flood power, riparian vegetation, channel change, Utah.]
Velocity of change is introduced as a measure of the dynamism of the built environment relevant to the relationship of cultural process and built form. Whereas previous studies have addressed, implicitly, velocity of change for particular urban processes, this paper attempts to develop methods for evaluating broad sections of the built environment based on the transcription and comparison of photographs available from archival and contemporary collections, a relatively neglected source of detailed information. Much can be learned from the analysis of the photographic imagery of cities. It permits measurement of change across areas of the cityscape larger than those occupied by individual buildings or defined by ground plans and cadastral units. Indices sensitive to alterations of the built environment are developed and applied to photographic archives of Austin, Texas. The results of preliminary calibrations are reported and the potential and limitation of these techniques are discussed.