Peer-Reviewed Journal Details
Mandatory Fields
Knowles, S
2017
January
London Journal
Railway Visions: William Hyde's Re-Imagining of London as a Networked Space
Validated
Optional Fields
42
291
310
This article considers a series of illustrations of London by William Hyde, seen from a vantage point indicative of the city's elevated railway network. Adopting an aesthetic position drawn from Whistler, these works, which have received very little scholarly attention, depict the city as a networked space. This article argues that Hyde's illustrations offered a challenge to the widely held view that the elevated railway offered its passengers a panoptic vision of the city. Using his interest in the city's transport network as a means to discuss the complexities of railway vision, his illustrations both detail the capacity of this system to reveal the scale and fundamental illegibility of the city, while simultaneously providing a mechanism through which a more coherent, spatialized relationship between the passenger moving within the network and the city could be constructed.
ABINGDON
0305-8034
10.1080/03058034.2017.1316580
Grant Details