Visual meaning-making in an underprivileged neighbourhood landscape: milieus and atmospheres. (November 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kasemets, Kadri
• Is Part Of: Visual communication. Volume 13:Number 4(2014:Nov.)
• Page Start: 459
• Page End: 470
• Publication Date: 2014-11
• Subjects: atmosphere -- collaborative self-generated photo elicitation -- meaning-making -- milieu -- neighbourhood; Visual communication -- Periodicals; Popular culture -- Periodicals; Art and society -- Periodicals; 302.222
• DOI: 10.1177/1470357214542208
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1470-3572

Abstract

By bringing together the spatially oriented 'milieu' and 'atmosphere' approach with the method of self-generated photo elicitation, this visual essay examines the possibility of the mediation of new meanings in urban neighbourhood representation and spatial organization. The milieu/atmosphere relationship offers a methodological background for visual communication in landscape, where, besides common and conscious interpretations, expression is given to non-graspable, sometimes inexplicable internal atmospheric experiences that have great potential to shift acknowledged understandings and interpretations of landscape aesthetics. A reflexive self-generated photo elicitation is introduced to bringing into communication unfamiliar atmospheric visual landscape experiences. This method is used in the underprivileged parts of the Kopli neighbourhood of North-Tallinn, Estonia. Some of the participants' representations were handled as atmospheric pictures, which, although different from the acknowledged milieu approach, brought into communication the milieu character of a strong neighbourhood.