Urban scenes of contested human identity: 'capturing the glances of others, the vistas of the world'

This article provisionally concludes earlier research on picture formats in representations of urban environments, on the scenic tradition's typiconic features and on its affiliation with a worldview frame associated with parallelist philosophical conceptions. The argument ranges from the motif of a single eye, via its cypiconic augmentation by pathos formulae of human actions and settings, to the field of visual narration by means of scenic description. In conclusion, examples of South African pictures are analysed in terms of key notions such as aposcopic vision in the scenic mode as a pathos formula or the theme of the social sublime.