2020 has radically reconfigured our relationship with our immediate surroundings. The outbreak of COVID-19 and subsequent shutdown of cities around the world have kept many people confined to their homes and neighborhoods, prompting them to observe both their domestic spaces and the surrounding streets at a new level of detail. A few months later, the murder of George Floyd led to protests on a scale not seen since the civil rights movement, with people around the world taking over public spaces to demand justice for Black and brown communities.
At a time in which our relationships to both private spaces and the public realm have been thrown open to question, what lessons can we learn from looking carefully at the world around us? How can we better understand the places where we live—the histories that have shaped them; the social, economic, and political mechanisms that make them function as they do today; the communities they structure; their possibilities for the future? Can we learn to document our surroundings not only in terms of color, composition, and texture, but by thinking through their impacts and their potential to shape more healthy, just, and resilient communities?
