Sociology & Photography by David Schalliol
I ve been following the Indianapolis arts group Big Car Collaborative since 2010, when I met co-founders Jim Walker and Shauta Marsh in what was then the up-and-coming neighborhood of Fountain Square. Ever since, I ve regularly checked in with them as they moved around the city, activating disused spaces, including a former automotive service center in [ ]
I first visited Charleroi, Belgium in 2016 as part of my residency at the CRP/ Centre régional de la photographie Hauts-De-France, when I was photographing the future of France s former coal producing region. Since 2020, I have been continuing that work across the international border through a long-term residency at BPS22 Musée d art de la [ ]
It s been another busy year working on Story Poles in the small beach towns of Southern California. In those communities, these temporary structures are erected to illustrated proposed construction forms. In the process, they demonstrate so much about the political nature of property, where sightlines carry tremendous value. Below are some recent favorites.
This winter marked my fourth trip to Tohoku, Japan, to track the region s recovery from the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. With each visit, I ve traveled south along the coast from the Kitakami River valley to the area surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Along the way, I ve met with small business owners, [ ]
Over the last two years, I have been collaborating with geographers, a playwright, a sound artist, and other scholars on Remix Place, a project designed to explore and represent the experience of residents on the France-Luxembourg border. Conceived for the 2022 European Capital of Culture in Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, our group has been busy interviewing residents, [ ]
In 2020-21, I was a photography fellow with Exhibit Columbus, an architecture and design biennial located in the remarkable mid-century modernist city of Columbus, Indiana. The original project I made for the exhibition was From the Mississippi Watershed, an exploration of the vast and varied watershed through the systems that connect it and the ways [ ]
I am thrilled to announce that my new book with Michael Carriere, The City Creative: The Rise of Urban Placemaking in Contemporary America, was published by The University of Chicago Press in April 2021. Michael and I started working on this long-term study in the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession, and so it seems [ ]
Buffalo is one of my favorite cities, with its amazing architectural history, telescope houses, and activist culture. So when in Upstate New York for the International Visual Sociological Association s annual meeting, I added a few days onto the trip to head west. The following photographs are a few highlights from my time in Saratoga Springs, [ ]
Earlier this summer, I returned to France to continue working on my Hauts-de-France Mining Basin project and to present at a conference about resilience strategies. While there, I photographed throughout the region, including at high-profile coal mine redevelopment sites. Among those I visited are the 51N4E-designed C-Mine complex and Koen Vanmechelen s Labiomista in Genk, Belgium, [ ]
I was in Los Angeles for a couple of days last week to screen The Area at the Urban Affairs Association annual meeting and then prepare for our screening at the Echo Park Film Center. I didn t have much time to make new work, but I was able to set aside a couple of hours [ ]