"Appropriation of the Topographical System."

These days it is trendy to walk and it is something we like to encourage users of DayOut to do. The topic has been given a thorough treatment in a fascinating new book reviewed in this week's Economist; The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, and Literature of Pedestrianism.

Geoff Nicholson the book's author writes of the French word flâner, “a truly wonderful word…it can mean to stroll, but it can also mean the act of simply hanging around.”

In a recent blog photographer Harvey Benge talks of roaming Paris, les flâneur, with friend and fellow photographer Bruce Connew.

Wikipedia tells us: The most notable application of flâneur to street photography probably comes from Susan Sontag in her 1977 essay, On Photography. She describes how, since the development of hand-held cameras in the early 20th century, the camera has become the tool of the flâneur:

The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque.' (pg. 55)

The heading comes from literary theorist, Michel de Certeau, who writes that walking “is a process of appropriation of the topographical system…a special acting-out of the place…it implies relations among differentiated positions”

This might seem somewhat ponderous but I like it.