City of Ghosts

The Aberdonian photographer George Washington Wilson (1823-1893) was a pioneer of commercial photography not just in Scotland but internationally. His images of Aberdeen’s civic grandeur in the late Victorian period helped to establish a proud vision of the city’s distinctive identity. The photographic collector Jonathan Ross, a contemporary of Washington Wilson’s, described early photographs of urban space as creating “cities of ghosts”, because long exposure times meant that figures passing through the frame while the shutter was open were glimpsed only as blurred traces of movement.

In March 2015, the photographer John Perivolaris revisited locations around the city photographed by Washington Wilson and his team, recording the urban environment of contemporary Aberdeen. It soon became clear that several of their vantage points had disappeared or were difficult to find, obscured by the barriers and security devices which regulate movement in contemporary cities. Compensation was to be found in the sweeping panoramas opened up by the roofs of Aberdeen’s numerous multi-storey car parks. Thus, it seems that a fundamental question to emerge from this dialogue with Washington Wilson concerns the current meaning of ‘public’ or ‘civic’ space, a concept that Washington Wilson’s images of nineteenth-century urban life do much to articulate.

City of Ghosts is an exhibition of fifteen photographs of revisted sites. I have created a soundscape to accompany the 15 images, played over 8 equally spaced loudspeakers. Sounds are recorded in and near the locations of the photographs, along with others recorded in the city, to enhance what the visitor is looking at as well as providing an overall image, a 16th image which combines elements from each of the latent soundscapes within the photographs.

The exhibition runs from 16th October to January 2016 and is situated in the Gallery space in the Sir Duncan Rice Library at the University of Aberdeen. The fifteen photographs taken by John can be seen here.