Photography in the Urban Renewal Toolkit: The Case of Pruitt-Igoe

In this paper, I consider two approaches to the analysis of photographic practices carried out as part of the federally-funded Urban Renewal program. Using the case study of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis, Missouri, I map photographers’ points of view and fields of view into a digital model to produce representations of the space of photography, and I map photographic fragments into a digital model to highlight photographers’ biases and omissions. The work discussed here is characteristic of ways in which photographic practices were used in other cities engaged in the Urban Renewal program.