Regarding the Pain of Indigenous Others

Abstract

Cities are real, physical, material concentrations of human activities and built environments, but they are also portals that allow and require unique ways of perceiving relations across space and time. Photography, especially the genre of seductive urban landscape views so often deployed by airlines, realtors, and city boosters, distorts our perceptions of space-time. These distortions are particularly serious in the unique configuration of Indigeneity and transnationalization that constitutes the lands presently known as Canada and British Columbia. Drawing inspiration from Sontag's dark but essential Regarding the Pain of Others, and focusing on the Vancouver global city region, this article seeks to develop critical captions for urban landscape views as what Eugène Atget portrayed as crime-scene evidence.