Abstract When was the city visually regarded and depicted as a comprehensive and intact entity? Going beyond historiographical conventions and temporal boundaries, this study discusses the specific and crucial moments of discovering the image of the city as a whole, its wide-ranging skyline, full profile, and clear outer borders. Thus, histories of the formation of the distant gaze, a sort of visual withdrawal which enabled us to capture the city as a whole – as an object of visual desire – are disclosed, and attention is drawn to the common patterns of these specific pictorial renditions. Likewise, the sense of detachment is exposed when distance moves beyond its denotation of spatial stance and appears related to discovering the historical time of these urban renditions.
Avinoam Shalem (Thu,) studied this question.